Recriminations have begun to fly around the Conservatives as a
senior figure called the last few weeks the “worst campaign in my
lifetime” and criticised the party for failing to tackle the threat from
Reform.
Rishi Sunak started the week with warnings against
handing Labour a “supermajority” and a “blank cheque” and claimed a vote
for Reform would hand more power to Keir Starmer.
However, a
number of Tory candidates, advisers and officials are deeply frustrated
with how he has run the campaign after calling a July election against
the advice of his key strategist Isaac Levido.
One senior Tory
party figure said on Monday it had been the “worst campaign in my
lifetime”, saying that while Sunak was wholly to blame for the early
election, there was a feeling that Levido could have pushed back more
against the July date and that Conservative HQ should have “taken the
fight to Reform” earlier.
They said Levido had made it clear
from the start that 2019 Tory switchers from Labour were “gone and never
coming back”, telling candidates that all their efforts should be made
to target potential Reform voters instead.
However, the source
said some people around the cabinet table had argued that the Tories
should just ignore Nigel Farage’s party, and the campaign had been too
frightened to tackle Reform’s arguments head-on for fear of offending
voters who sympathised with them.
The senior figure said the
mood among many Tory candidates was that it was “tough out there”, while
those whose seats were less difficult were “focusing on what’s left and
what’s next” – a new Conservative leadership battle.
They also
said candidates in tight marginal seats were getting zero financial or
practical support, even on social media, and there was frustration that
Conservative HQ had either overspent in the run-up to the election or
wrongly thought it would get a last-minute deluge of funding.
There
is also suspicion among some Tory candidates that CCHQ could be holding
back some funding to rebuild the party after an election defeat rather
than going all-out on defending candidates.
Many Conservative
candidates are upset that they do not feel as supported by CCHQ as they
were in 2019, with top party figures and cabinet ministers having to
spend time defending or winning their own seats rather than on national
strategy.
One Tory candidate defending a majority of more than
10,000 in the south-east said they had had to raise all their own
funding for their local campaign and felt it would be “very tight”
against the Liberal Democrats.
Another contrasted their local
campaign with the national one. “The local party has been really
efficient at identifying the messages that resonate and getting leaflets
out to the right people,” they said. “As for the national campaign,
well, I know all campaigns have mistakes but I’ve never seen anything
like this.”
One senior Tory claimed the only message that was
resonating with the party’s voters was the line that failing to vote
Conservative would hand Labour a supermajority on Thursday. They pointed
out that the warning had been made largely off-the-cuff during a
broadcast interview with Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, rather
than as part of the prime minister’s strategy.
In an interview
with the Times, Starmer said such a majority would allow Labour to “roll
up our sleeves and get on with the change we need”, saying the party
needs a strong mandate to make changes the “whole country” wants.
At
a rally in Oxfordshire on Tuesday, Sunak will appeal to wavering voters
to lend him their support to stop Labour winning by a huge margin,
saying the result is “not a foregone conclusion”.
“If just
130,000 people switch their vote and lend us their support, we can deny
Starmer that supermajority,” he will say. “Just think about that: you
have the power to use your vote to prevent an unchecked Labour
government.”...<<<
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