Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she attributed the party’s worst-ever defeat - in which it was reduced to just 121 seats - to the party pursuing an “idiotic strategy of intermittently and inconsistently making ‘Tory Right’ noises which disintegrated when set against our liberal Conservative record”.
“I say again, whatever some of my colleagues think, the voters aren’t mugs: they saw what we did in office and ignored what we insincerely said while campaigning,” she added.
The former home secretary - who retained her seat of Fareham and Waterlooville but with a much-reduced majority - blamed “high taxes” and “high immigration” as well as “insane political correctness” she believed the party had embraced for the scale of the defeat.
The fault lines are appearing in the Tories over what the new incarnation of the party is going to be. Broadly it seems like it’s going to be Kemi Badenoch with a more traditional, philosophically grounded version of the party (Roger Scruton style), on one side. Then on the other we’ve got Suella Braverman who is wanting to reclaim the Reform vote by becoming a more European style populist party. Steve Baker, self described “brexit hard man” (lol) was making noises about running but realistically it will be one of the other two that will have the base within the party to make a proper run for leader of the opposition.
I suspect there could have been a 3rd option for the one nation conservatives if Penny Mordaunt had kept her seat but unfortunately the more centrist tories seemed to lose more seats than the right wing hardcore.
She’s said how she’d like to welcome Farage into the Tory Party. I’m not sure that is still viable after some of his statements during the election but if she is intent in doubling down in the nasty party angle it might. So if she wins, and the membership tends to skew towards the awful.end of the spectrum, I wouldn’t be surprised at merger negotiations which I bet Farage would jump at as it gives him his road to greater power.
Yeah, he hasn’t been very good at hiding the fact that he basically wishes he was a Tory. A lot of his speeches regarding the subject sound like a jilted lover emphasising how “over it” they are.