Suella Braverman has said the Conservatives will never recover unless they listen to Reform UK voters, calling for the party to run on a platform of protecting “national culture”.
The former home secretary, expected to launch a Tory leadership bid, told the National Conservatism conference in Washington on Monday that the party must start “talking credibly to Reform voters” or face extinction.
“The Tory party is never going to recover until it learns some basic manners,” she said. “We’re entitled to not one vote, save the ones we earn by keeping our promises.”
Saying she planned to make Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, “uncomfortable” in Parliament, Mrs Braverman urged the Tories to “credibly offer Conservative policies which make the existence of a separate, rival, Right-wing party moot”.
She added: “Reform aren’t going to magically vanish unless we do something about the concerns of their voters.”
Mrs Braverman, sacked by Rishi Sunak in November after a row about the policing of pro-Palestinian protests, blamed the former prime minister’s “farcical gimmicks” and “liberal Conservatism” for the party’s landslide defeat last week.
“What the government mostly did after 2022, when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, was roll out a programme our new Labour Government today could quite happily do,” she said.
She accused Mr Sunak of failing to stop the “lunatic woke virus” in the Civil Service, and of never wanting to stop small boat migrants from crossing the Channel.
“It didn’t happen because Rishi Sunak didn’t want to do it,” she said. “It was a choice by that politician not to it, it wasn’t because it was impossible.”
Mrs Braverman, the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, has established herself on the populist Right wing of the party, calling for the Conservatives to abandon “the centre”.
However, Damien Green, a centrist MP, warned in The Observer that a shift to the Right would be “weapons-grade idiocy in a first past the post electoral system”.
On Monday, Mrs Braverman said the Tories should be “unashamedly the champions of family” and of “traditional culture specific to our nation”, adding: “We must fight to protect our national culture, which is precious because it unifies and allows us to be at home in our national home.
“That culture is contained in our customs, religion, traditions, common law, architecture, countryside, our art and music, our educational institution, our sporting traditions and our constitution.”
Ms Braverman attributed the Conservatives’ defeat to there being “far too little audible division” on the backbenches, as “the vast majority of the Tory party loyally backed Rishi Sunak and his disastrous policies”.
She named the proposed smoking ban and Mr Sunak’s failure to bring down net migration figures as key policy failures.
The former home secretary has emerged as an early contender for the Conservative leadership after Mr Sunak announced his intention to stand down following Labour’s landslide election victory on Thursday.
However her potential candidacy was dealt a blow at the weekend when The Telegraph revealed that Danny Kruger, a key ally, had switched his allegiance to Robert Jenrick.
Her other likely opponents include Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and Priti Patel, although no potential candidates have yet publicly declared their intention to stand.
The Conservative Party is divided over how long it should take to choose its next leader, with some MPs including Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Nick Timothy calling for a drawn-out process to allow time for members to reflect on the election loss.
Allies of Mr Sunak have suggested he does not intend to remain as leader beyond the summer, which may force the party to choose an interim leader if the contest lasts several months.
Source Agencies
