Suella Braverman has urged the Conservative Party to “read the writing on the wall” and “prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition”.
A day before the general election, the former home secretary declared “it’s over” for the Tories and urged the party to conduct “a searingly honest post-match analysis” after its widely expected defeat.
Polls suggest Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is set for a historic victory in Thursday’s general election, with forecasts suggesting it will win more seats than during Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.
In one of the last major polls of the campaign, election experts at Survation said there was a 99 per cent chance the party will take more than 418 seats, the number won by Sir Tony 27 years ago.
And, writing in The Telegraph, Ms Braverman said victory should no longer be the goal for the Tories.
“Thursday’s vote is now all about forming a strong enough opposition,” she wrote.
“One needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”
Ms Braverman blamed the situation on a fracture within the Conservative Party resulting from a rise in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
She said: “It is notable that Labour’s vote share has not markedly increased in recent weeks, but our vote is evaporating from both Left and Right.
“The critics will cite Boris (Johnson), Liz (Truss), 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. 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.
“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.”
Ms Braverman said the Tories need “a searingly honest post-match analysis”, “because the fight for the soul of the Conservative Party will determine whether we allow Starmer a clear run at destroying our country for good or having a chance to redeem it in due course.
“Indeed, it will decide whether our party continues to exist at all.”
The article will be seen as a premature pitch for the Tory leadership by Ms Braverman, positioning herself to be the champion of the party’s right wing after the election. She is likely to come up against business secretary Kemi Badenoch, among others, depending on which Tory big beasts manage to keep their seats on Thursday night.
Meanwhile Ms Badenoch’s camp has been hit by fears that delays sending out postal votes in her constituency could delay any potential bid for the Tory leadership.
Councils across the country are scrambling to ensure postal votes are delivered and returned on time amid concerns that some people could be left disenfranchised at the general election.
In Ms Badenoch’s North West Essex constituency, more than 2,600 postal ballots were not sent in time, leading to fears Labour could be entitled to challenge the result if she wins by a small margin.
That would force an immediate by-election, during which time Ms Badenoch would be ineligible to stand for the Tory leadership, The Times reported.
