Suella Braverman blames Rishi Sunak's 'idiotic' strategy for Tories' crushing defeat

Former UK home secretary Suella Braverman squarely blamed the Conservative Party’s embarrassing election debacle on her ex-boss Rishi Sunak for pursuing an "idiotic" strategy and her party colleagues for treating voters like ‘mugs’.

In a strongly worded article in The Telegraph, Braverman said the Conservatives ‘deserved’ the historic election defeat. In her view, Tories had 14 years in office and failed to deliver and so "deserved this result”.

Voters aren't mugs

Braverman, who managed to retain her seat Fareham and Waterlooville, however, with a much-reduced majority, observed that people didn’t choose Labour, but instead they rejected the Tories and that is the “simple truth”.

Braverman attributed the party’s worst defeat in the UK election, in which they have been reduced to just 121 seats in the House of Commons, to the party pursuing an idiotic strategy of intermittently and inconsistently making 'Tory Right' noises, which fell apart when it went up against their liberal Conservative record.

'Insane political correctness'

Reflecting on what went so horribly wrong for the Tories, she wrote, "The voters aren’t mugs, they saw what we did in office and ignored what we insincerely said while campaigning".

Also, Braverman felt that "high taxes, high immigration", and the party's "insane political correctness" led to the Tories losing the elections so badly. In her article, she launched a scathing attack on Sunak questioning his seriousness in delivering the Rwanda deportation scheme, which Labour has now scrapped.

“Rishi might not have meant Rwanda and did not do it, but I meant it and wanted it done,” she wrote. “The promise he’d do it is why I’m the guilty woman who helped make him PM,”she added.

According to her, many saw the result coming months ago and advised a way out. But they were the ones who were vilified as “divisive” and “self-indulgent” at that time.

Overhaul needed

Then Braverman, who is suspected of wanting to bid to be the next Conservative leader, went on to provide remedies to revive the party.

The Conservatives needed to "overhaul” the party organisation to enable MPs to listen to members, she advised. The grassroots must be involved in a leadership election, she said, claiming that the blame for making Sunak the leader goes to party MPs. She referred to him as a leader who has led two-thirds of her colleagues to lose their seats.

This culture of a "court of chums", and a "claque of cheerleaders" telling how brilliantly you’re doing needs to end, she pointed out.

Parliamentary candidates have to be chosen by party members, not doled out by the leadership since that approach has led to destruction, she said in her article.