Tory rivals battle to set narrative of party’s historic defeat

Three likely Conservative leadership contenders have warned that high taxes and a failure to govern effectively contributed to the party’s worst-ever defeat, as an ousted Tory MP declared the party “dead” and beyond resurrection.

Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Victoria Atkins on Sunday began in earnest to wage a battle over why they lost the UK general election and pitch where the party should head next, following its brutal ousting from government.

Jenrick, from the right of the party, said the Tories had “insulted” voters by allowing net migration to spiral and told the BBC high taxes and a general failure to deliver had contributed to its hammering at the polls.

He added that his party had failed to identify “just how broken some of our public services were” or grip a series of necessary “tough decisions”.

Braverman, also a Tory rightwinger, told GB News that millions of voters felt “betrayed and angry” with the Conservatives over high immigration and taxes, as she warned the party faced an “existential threat” from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Meanwhile, Atkins, a Tory centrist, insisted the nation was still “instinctively Conservative” despite Labour’s stunning victory.

She said voters wanted lower taxes and help to “thrive in their personal lives and in their livelihoods”. The former health secretary conceded that the NHS had been one area where the Tory government had fallen short.

The trio are among a clutch of surviving MPs expected to throw their hat in the ring for the leadership race, alongside other potential contenders Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Priti Patel.

But some of their ousted colleagues argued there was no path back to power for the party, after it plunged to just 121 MPs — the lowest ever Conservative tally.

Former Tory MP Marcus Fysh, who lost his Yeovil seat to the Liberal Democrats on Thursday, said the Conservative party should be “put out of its misery” and that anyone involved with it was “wasting their time”.

Fysh, who said he had quit the party, wrote on X: “It’s dead. No chance of ever being electable again with its current non-Conservative parliamentary composition. Move on.”

He told Times Radio: “If it was my business I’d wind it up.”

He claimed the remaining rump of the Tory parliamentary party was made up of “centre-left politicians” whose values overlapped with Labour.

Other Tory MPs who were unseated last week echoed his pessimism about their party’s future fortunes. One minister who was ejected from parliament forecast that support for Reform would continue to rise and prevent the Conservatives from ever returning to power.

On Tuesday the Tory parliamentary party will convene in Westminster to elect the House of Commons Speaker, before MPs are sworn in.

A key first step will be electing a chair and executive of the party’s 1922 committee, which represents backbench Tory MPs.

Tory figures said nominations were likely to open on Tuesday and that the contest would finish on July 17, coinciding with the King’s Speech when Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will set out his legislative agenda.

The newly elected 1922 executive and the Conservative party board will then meet to agree the rules and timeline for the Tory leadership contest.

Some party officials are calling for a summer race that wraps up by early September. They have argued that the new Labour government is likely to spend its political capital early on difficult decisions and these unpopular moves should be forcefully opposed by a settled Tory front bench.

Others insist that a longer period of soul-searching is due after such a catastrophic defeat and have proposed using the Tory conference in October as a beauty parade for the leadership candidates, with the race concluding later in the autumn.

Jenrick and Michael Howard, the former Tory party leader, backed proposals for a longer contest on Sunday.

Some Conservatives said they were hopeful Rishi Sunak could be persuaded to stay on as leader until his replacement was selected.

He has so far committed only to remaining in situ until the leadership contest is launched, but an ally confirmed he was set to appear from the opposition despatch box at Starmer’s first Prime Minister’s Questions on July 24.

Private research conducted by Tory figures showed that Penny Mordaunt was the runaway favourite with the party membership, suggesting her ejection from parliament leaves the field wide open.

One Conservative official said the research showed that members wanted a candidate who “makes their inner right-wing views acceptable” rather than “mucky or icky”, adding: “They want Nigel Farage’s policy and David Cameron’s presentation style.”