- author, Christy Cooney
- role, BBC News
A former cabinet minister has warned that the Conservative party faces “electoral Armageddon”.
Sir Robert Buckland, the first Conservative MP to be confirmed overnight as having lost his seat, said too many members of the party were focused on “personal agendas and position battles” rather than “concentrating on the job they were elected to do”.
According to exit polls by the BBC, ITV and Sky, the Conservatives are expected to retain 131 seats, down 241, while Labour will come in first with 410 seats.
If approved, it would be the Conservative Party’s worst result in modern history.
Sir Robert told the BBC he was “fed up with the politics of performance art”.
“I have watched my Conservative colleagues pose, write inflammatory op-eds and say stupid things without any evidence, instead of focusing on the jobs they were elected to do,” the former attorney general said.
Asked if he was referring to former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who published a strongly critical piece of the government in the Daily Telegraph just days before voting began, he said: “Yes, and unfortunately that is not an isolated example.”
“I’m tired of personal agendas and fighting over status. With the Conservative Party facing a major election battle, the truth is that it’s going to be a bunch of bald men arguing over a comb-over.”
“This isn’t about left or right. It’s about people who want to get into politics to get things done, not to become something.”
Sir Roberts added that for the party to move further to the right in the wake of the results “would be a disastrous mistake and would take us further into the abyss”.
Other senior Conservatives also acknowledged that the party was heading for defeat, and began to debate how it got to this point.
Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Minister, who is expected to lose in Central Devon, said: “This is an incredibly tough time for the Conservative party and it goes without saying that it is very disappointing to see so many of my colleagues defeated.” [are not] I intend to return to Congress.
“When history writes this, I think we’re going to recognize that this administration got a lot of credit.”
Former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said it had been a “clearly terrible night” for his party and that it had “come to take its core vote for granted”.
“We need to win over voters in every election. If we take our base for granted, voters will look to other parties.”
He also said he believed the party had made a mistake in excluding Boris Johnson, who led the party to victory in the 2019 general election but is facing a series of scandals that mean he will step down as prime minister in 2022.
“Voters expect the prime minister they choose to remain prime minister and it is for voters to decide when that prime minister should change,” Mr Rees-Mogg said.
Former Cabinet Office minister Steve Baker, whose party was given less than a 1% chance of retaining its seat by the BBC, said the party was facing an “incredibly tough night”.
He acknowledged that Rishi Sunak had a “brilliant mind” but made mistakes during the Normandy Senate election campaign, including the decision to call off events marking the Normandy Senate election early, and said the election outcome was likely to be “quite devastating”.
