Brexiteer’s cousin says he’s a ‘rent a quote right wing clown’ who is ‘no better than Nigel Farage’

Conor Burns (L) arrives at the Conservative Party annual conference in 2018 alongside then foreign minister Boris Johnson. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

A Tory MP has been owned by his cousin on Twitter who claimed the Brexiteer was a “rent a quote right wing clown” who was “no better than Farage”.

Tory MP Conor Burns, who was forced to resign in May after being found guilty of breaching parliamentary privilege, tried to downplay a Twitter spat with his cousin.

Responding to a tweet by Burns berating US presidential candidate Joe Biden for calling the Northern Ireland peace deal the Good Friday Agreement, Stevie wrote: “It’s all BS culture wars. It‘s all they’ve got and @ConorBurnsUK is a rent a quote right wing clown. No better than Farage.”

“2020 clearly is not the year of cousin love!” the MP replied.

@Bildo47 wrote: “That cousin of yours seems to need a hug or a wee nap. Fella has a wee bit of rage going on.”

This led Stevie to respond with: “History will not be kind. Your lies and peddling of disinformation is ruining people’s lives and as a family member I can no longer be silent #silenceiscolusion.”

Burns tired to play down the comment, later tweeting: “Being attacked by a cousin may be upsetting for some. When he is one of roughly 30 and not seen him for 30 years it’s cool.”

Burns has resigned from the government three times.

He resigned in May 2020 and was suspended from parliament after being found guilty of using his status to threatened a member of the public over a debt dispute involving his father. The Commons standards committee said the backbencher was culpable of “an attempt to intimidate a member of the public into doing as Mr Burns wished, in a dispute relating to purely private family interests which had no connection with Mr Burns’ parliamentary duties.”

It went on to say that he “persisted in making veiled threats to use parliamentary privilege to further his family’s interests even during the course of the commissioner’s investigation, and that he misleadingly implied that his conduct had the support of the House authorities”.

In 2018, he resigned as parliamentary private secretary to then foreign minister Boris Johnson because he wanted to speak more openly on other policy areas.

In August 2017, he sent out a series of aggressive posts to Michel Barnier’s account demanding how the UK’s Brexit bill was legally calculated. He claimed the messages were sent by a hacker who broke into his Twitter account.

Burns is still the MP for Bournemouth West.