BOURNEMOUTH East MP Tobias Ellwood says Boris Johnson risks ending up as “just another former occupant of No 10” if he takes Parliament for granted as the storm continues from the Owen Paterson row.

Hours after former Tory premier Sir John Major criticised Mr Johnson for trashing the Parliament’s reputation over the saga, fellow Conservative Mr Ellwood wrote that testing times prompted the public to look to its Government to provide “leadership, statecraft and vision”.

“A PM who takes Parliament for granted will achieve none of these things and simply end up, not as a big beast, but as just another former occupant of No 10,” Mr Ellwood wrote in a national newspaper.

The former defence minister, who was axed from the Government when Mr Johnson replaced Theresa May in July 2019, said: “This mess should be used as an opportunity to press the reset button on the entire Parliament-government relationship, then regroup. There is genuine rage within the ranks.

“Constituents have been rightly appalled by what they have seen. One system for MPs, another for the public.”