The Conservative Party has “failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats” while focusing too much on Reform, Theresa May has warned.
Writing in The Times ahead of the party’s annual conference in Birmingham, Baroness May said the remaining candidates for the Tory leadership could “play into Reform’s hands” by failing to understand why they lost the general election.
The former prime minister said the Conservatives lost power in July not due to policy, but because the party had “trashed our brand”, losing its reputation for “integrity and competence”.
Blaming the Partygate scandal and Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Lady May added the Tories had spent “too long tacking to the right in order to appease potential Reform voters” and “forgot that we are not a right-wing party but a centre-right party”.
Lady May compared the Conservatives’ strategy to last month’s 1,500m Olympic final in Paris, in which Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen was too focused on defeating Britain’s Josh Kerr that he allowed American Cole Hocker to come through on the inside and take gold.
She said: “Just as Ingebrigtsen was focused on Kerr and failed to see that his action against him would open up other threats, so the Conservative Party has been focused on Reform and failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats – losing 60 seats to them at the election.”
Her intervention comes ahead of a Conservative conference that will see former ministers Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat continue their battle for the party leadership.
The four candidates will each have an opportunity to address the conference, and their campaigns will be lobbying MPs before parliamentarians pick the final two on October 10. Members will choose between those two, with the result declared on November 2.
Even before they had arrived in Birmingham on Saturday, most of the leadership contenders began setting out their pitch for the coming days in interviews and op-eds for national newspapers.
Immigration has so far featured heavily in the leadership campaign, with frontrunner Mr Jenrick making it a centrepiece of his campaign and arguing the party’s defeat was because it broke its promises on immigration.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, he said he wanted to “put Nigel Farage out of business” and described Reform as “a symptom not a cause”.
He said: “It exists in its current state because my party failed. We made promises on issues that millions of people…small ‘c’ conservatives like me, care passionately about, like controlled and reduced immigration, like securing our borders, and we didn’t deliver on those promises.”
Meanwhile, Ms Badenoch used a Times interview to accuse Mr Jenrick’s campaign of engaging in “dirty tricks” by lending votes to Mr Cleverly in an effort to keep her out of the final two.
She said: “If the MPs try and stitch it up, I think the members will be very angry.”
Mr Jenrick’s campaign has denied Ms Badenoch’s allegations.
Mr Cleverly, the former home secretary, focused on tax rather than immigration in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, saying Labour’s election attack line that the Conservatives had raised the tax burden to its highest level in decades showed the party “have work to do”.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel