David Cameron ‘shot a stag on Scots island and named it Boris’

David Cameron reportedly shot a stag on a remote Scottish island and named it after one of his most bitter political rivals.

The former prime minister was taking part in an organised hunt on Jura last month when he named the slain deer after his eventual successor in Downing Street, Boris Johnson.

Cameron’s father-in-law, Viscount Astor, owns the 20,000-acre Tarbert estate on the Hebridean isle. The ex-Tory leader is a keen deer stalker on the estate, which has been owned by the Astors for almost a century.

Writing in The Times, columnist Alex Massie said: “Life after politics has its consolations even for David Cameron, who dearly misses the rough and tumble of his years in office. Some pastimes that were sacrificed for optical (which is to say political) expediency may be resumed.

Picture: PA/Derek Parker

“Thus last month, on the Isle of Jura, Cameron shot a stag and named him Boris. This was the sequel to a stalking expedition last summer during which a similarly stricken deer was given the name Gove.”

With the wild deer population on Jura standing at around 5,000, the island is a popular destination for hunters.

Mr Cameron has been busy the past week promoting his long-awaited political memoir.

In an interview with ITV News yesterday, the former Tory MP was asked if he thought the current Prime Minister was right to prorogue Parliament for five weeks.

Mr Cameron replied: “I don’t. We’ll wait for what the courts say. I don’t think it was illegal.

“It looked to me, from the outside, like rather sharp practice of trying to restrict the debate and I thought it was actually from his point of view probably counterproductive.

“In the end, we have to work through Parliament, and you can’t deny the arithmetic of Parliament and the majorities there are in Parliament.”

Mr Cameron also claimed that Mr Johnson believed Brexit would be “crushed like a toad under the harrow” before he joined the Vote Leave team during the 2016 referendum.