If there’s one thing this election season hasn’t been short on, it’s surprises. Now, with less than 24 hours to go until polling stations open, former home secretary Suella Braverman has weighed in on her party’s impending implosion with an extraordinary OpEd in the Telegraph. Blasting her own side, Braverman sets about a blistering attack on the Tories, lamenting that ‘the writing [is] on the wall: it’s over and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition’. Crikey.
In a scathing entry, the former cabinet minister and Rishi Sunak critic raged about her party’s decline in the polls. ‘Our vote is evaporating from both Left and Right,’ she wrote furiously. ‘The critics will cite Boris, Liz, Rwanda and, I can immodestly predict, even me as all being fatal to our ‘centrist’ vote. The reality is rather different: we are haemorrhaging votes largely to Reform.’
The senior Tory went on:
Why? Because we failed to cut immigration or tax, or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years. If our best defence is whining that the Left took over the institutions, who negligently let them? There’s a reason why insincere posturing isn’t fooling anyone now, and it’s our record in office.
Ouch. ‘The Reform phenomenon was predictable, avoidable and is entirely our own fault,’ Suella added, continuing:
This simple fact seems to be lost on my colleagues who have driven our party’s bus off the side of the cliff, while angrily blaming those of us who kept pointing at the obvious signs saying: “Cliff Edge Dead Ahead, Bad for Buses”…
We may lose hundreds of excellent MPs because of our abject inability to have foreseen this inevitability months ago: that our failure to unite the Right would destroy us. Tory Cabinet ministers attacking Farage is like a patient berating the doctor for the illness. It’s an illness that could have been easily prevented by the patient taking heed of the warnings years ago, admitting to the problem and adopting some healthy habits.
And by no means overly effusive about Nigel Farage’s ‘start-up’, Braverman noted Reform’s failure to properly vet candidates before drawing the blame back to the door of the Conservatives. ‘I’ve been on the receiving end of racism myself and it’s right that the PM called it out,’ the former minister said in a rare nod of praise towards Sunak, before pouring scorn on her party’s decision-making over the Tory donor racism row:
But cries of hurt and anger look less powerful when the Conservative Party was perfectly happy to take the money from Frank Hester. Remarks about hating black women were glossed over in the name of filling our party coffers. I don’t follow the logic. Nor do the voters. Whatever “the smartest men in the room” might privately think, the public are not in fact mugs.
Oo er. It’s hardly friendly fire…
Braverman’s stark warning – that the ‘fight for the soul of the Conservative party…will decide whether our party continues to exist at all’ – comes as senior Tories consider how to save their party from ‘extinction‘. Leadership hopefuls are polishing off their CVs in anticipation of a post-election party implosion and the names of senior Tories, including Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch, have been doing the rounds of late. Mr S wonders whether Suella’s scathing attack may be the start of her own bid for the top job. Watch this space…
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