The Conservative MP Neil Parish risked being shot by police protecting Jeremy Hunt earlier this year after the Tory politician joined the then foreign secretary’s motorcade without authorisation. “They were not that far from f***ing shooting him because he was tailing the foreign secretary and they didn’t know who the f*** he was,” a source tells The Londoner.
Hunt, who was running for Tory leadership at the time, met Parish at a cheese farm shortly before a hustings in Exeter, near Parish’s constituency of Tiverton and Honiton, on June 28. “My intentions were honourable,” Parish told The Londoner this morning, before conceding: “I’m the guilty party. It’s a good job they didn’t shoot me.” As they travelled to Exeter, Parish “attempted to join the then foreign secretary’s convoy of three armoured police cars. Big, reinforced, five-and-a -half-tonne Land Rovers.
“He tried to join it in his Volvo because he thought it would be a quicker way to get into the venue,” the source said.
A second source explained: “The cops began to take evasive measures like running red lights and speeding over the limit. And he just kept up. And assumed he was allowed to be part of the convoy.”
The first source added: “The police officers in the convoy had gone, ‘What is this all about? Who is this d***head behind us?’ They were this close to calling in a full-on SWAT team.
“Fortunately, Devon and Cornwall Police were called to the scene. They pulled him over to one side and they screamed at him.”
“I am quite impulsive, I just did it. My biggest mistake was I didn’t tell them I was going to do it,” Parish told The Londoner.
“Then afterwards I thought, ‘Well, that was bloody stupid wasn’t it?’
“I’ve learnt my lesson, I will not be doing that again.”