A strong and effective opposition must be in place before Labour’s first Budget

As the former Leader of the House of Commons said after losing her own seat on Thursday, democracy is never wrong.

The Conservative Party has just been through a gruelling General Election campaign where we were rejected by the electorate, with many of my colleagues and I being ousted out of office.

As a Party, we have much to consider and some serious soul-searching to do to ensure we are match fit to take the fight to Labour at the next election.

That starts by re-engaging with our voters to learn the lessons from where we went wrong.

It will take some time to properly assess what we need to better to regain the trust of the electorate, but this must start by showing we can hold Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to account.

This means that we cannot let them create a false narrative about our Party’s economic record in office.

We stabilised the economy after the financial crash, got over four million more people into work and steered the nation’s businesses and families through the Covid-19 pandemic and Putin’s war in Ukraine.

We must now ensure that their unfunded spending plans must be vigorously scrutinised by an effective opposition.

For that to happen, we must appoint a Leader before their first Budget.

Labour are promising some of the most radical changes to public life since Tony Blair dismantled our constitution in the late-1990s.

It would be deeply irresponsible to allow Labour to begin their first six months in office without a credible Opposition in Parliament.

We need a new Leader and team in place that can stand-up to Starmer and not let him run rampant over your taxes, leave our borders defenceless and concrete over our green belt without adequate scrutiny.

I am clear that whoever our new Leader might be, we must ensure that they have the unwavering support of both MPs and Conservative members.

As a former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, I was humbled by the hard work and dedication of our activists and members who support our Party through thick and thin.

Members are indispensable and have a right to have a voice in re-establishing the Conservatives as the natural party of Government.

Any attempt to exclude members from the selection process risks pushing out the very people who get out and about to support our MPs and Councillors come rain or shine.

Whilst it would be wrong to rush any leadership process, we have to learn from the lessons of the past and not drag this process out longer than necessary.

With Labour enjoying their honeymoon period, it will be our Party Conference in September and Labour’s first Budget rumoured for October that will give us the opportunity to demonstrate we have begun to listen to voters and understand what caused many of them to either sit the last election out or lodge a protest vote elsewhere.

For that reason, I believe we must unveil our new leader and their team by Labour’s first budget at the latest, with the full backing of the Parliamentary party and our loyal membership.

The need for this is critical. We do not want our Party Conference to be televised showing disunity. That only gives Labour the ammunition they desire to falsely portray us a Party putting ourselves before the interests of the country.

That is dangerous because next year, dozens of Conservative-led local authorities are up for election across England, in stark contrast to just the one Labour-run local authority.

It’s vital we have a new leader, with an army of ready and willing members and activists, ready to support our Councillors and avoid the dreaded words of “Labour gain” next to these local authorities’ names.

Be selecting a new leader before Labour’s first budget, it will give us the time to set in place the foundations to call out Starmer’s Labour Party and ensure he doesn’t go unmarked for longer than is necessary, giving us the time to be firing on all cylinders for the local elections next May which will be a springboard for a return of a Conservative government at the next general election.