PMQs: Rishi Sunak focuses on local elections ahead of coronation
Rishi Sunak has been slammed for “knifing” Boris Johnson as prime minister last year after the party faced disastrous local election results overnight. The Prime Minister today admitted he was “disappointed” to lose “hard-working Conservative councillors” after hundreds of seats were lost last night. A party source cast blame on Mr Sunak for causing the “chaos” after “knifing” Boris Johnson when he pushed him to resign as prime minister last year.
They told the i: “Sunak can’t blame these results on last year’s chaos.
“He started that chaos by knifing the most successful Tory election winner in 50 years.
“Sunak’s claim that stability has been restored is shot to bits.”
Former Conservative Party MEP David Campbell Bannerman said the party should “not rule out” bringing back Mr Johnson as leader.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said the Tory party is not “getting our message across very well – that people are very concerned about what we’re doing, what we stand for”.
He added: “It isn’t about ‘bring back Boris’, by the way. It is about party democracy. But it’s true that a lot of our members still like and rate Boris, as do many of the public, and given the scale of the challenge ahead we shouldn’t rule that out as an option longer term.”
Mr Campbell-Bannerman claimed that party members are still not happy about “the way that we got rid of Boris”.
The former MEP explained: “I’ve spoken to quite a few people who regret that on the doorstep.
“We’re putting up taxes, the highest taxes for 70 years, and there’s a price to be paid for that and we want to get back to more traditional Conservative policies.”
Speaking to GB News, he added: “I’m afraid I blame Rishi because he brought down Boris.
“His campaign started the year before, allegedly a year before Boris actually stepped down…bringing down Boris has taken us from just two to four percent behind in the polls down to minus 30 percent.
“And we’ve recovered a little bit, but only to minus 17, which is still pretty disastrous.”
Lord Cruddas, president of the Conservative Democratic Organisation that was launched to give power back to members following the oustings of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, told the Express: “The local elections results and the dire polls leading into the local elections are a reflection of the disunity in the Conservative Party caused by the 1922 committee and MPs in removing two sitting Prime Ministers and installing a leader rejected by the members.
“You cannot expect any political party to be successful if you ignore and disenfranchise members and treat them with contempt. Which is what has happened to the Conservative Party in the last year.
“There is only one way the Conservative Party can turn this whole thing around and that is to listen to the members and start to rebuild the party from the grassroots upwards.
“Otherwise the Conservative Party will be out of power for a generation and the blame will lay firmly at the feet of the Conservative Parliamentary Party.”
Sir Keir Starmer today gloated he is heading for No 10 at the next general election as he celebrated Labour’s local election results.
“You cannot expect any political party to be successful if you ignore and disenfranchise members and treat them with contempt. Which is what has happened to the Conservative Party in the last year.
The Labour leader told ecstatic supporters in Medway: “Make no mistake, we are on course for a Labour majority at the next general election.”
Labour has seized battlegrounds from the Tories including the Kent council for the first time since 1998.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak this morning said it was “hard to draw firm conclusions” from the initial results, with a little over a quarter of councils having declared.
But the Prime Minister insisted he was “not detecting any massive groundswell of movement towards the Labour Party or excitement for its agenda” despite the Opposition gains.
Source: Read Full Article