Almost 100 Tory MPs have been told to slip Boris Johnson's speech marking the Queen's Platinum Jubilee to plot aN election strategy as party chiefs fear scores of seats are vulnerable to Labour and Lib Dems.
The Prime Minister is due to lead special 'addresses to the Crown' in the Commons on Thursday as the UK prepares to mark 70 years of the 96-year-old Monarch's reign.
But CCHQ has ordered more than 90 MPs with marginal constituencies to attend a 'target seats launch event' the same day some 97 miles away in south-west Leicestershire's Hinckley.
The MPs' away-day, hosted by party chairman Oliver Dowden, will see activists game how the party can hang on its 2019 coalition as nerves jangle over a series of by-election defeats and May's disastrous local elections results.
But Tory backbenchers, already angry at the PM's faltering leadership and Downing Street's handling of the Partygate saga, have said "no one wants to go" and voiced frustration over the event's timing.
One MP told the Mirror it made the party look "desperate", adding: “After everything, including Partygate, the party is trying the patience of even the most true blue Tory by dragging them away to this corporate not-so-jolly.”
Another said: "It is astonishing as no one wants to go.
