A Tory MP led the charge on Question Time against his own party this evening, tearing into the Conservative’s record and saying they deserved to lose the election.
George Freeman, who was a senior minister in Rishi Sunak’s government as recently as November 2023, slammed the Tories and accused his team of “taking voters for granted”.
He blasted: “I think politicians have to earn loyalty, and let me be very clear with you my party has taken voters for granted.
“I think there were a lot of good policies but the conduct of many of my colleagues in office and my party in office, we’ve looked as though power is ours by divine right, a crown to be played with while people are suffering and we’ve been thrown out unceremoniously for it.
Mr Freeman said that while Keir Starmer is a “decent man”, the huge Labour majority was more a result of the Tories’ losing than Labour winning mass popular support.
He argued: “Yes Labour have won and they deserve to given that track record, but this wasn’t a 1997-style Blair surge of ‘here is a man who will lead us for the next 10-15 years’… this majority was ours lost by bad behaviour”.
In a more optimistic note the top Tory predicted that should the party begin to “behave properly” from now on they can “bounce back”.
Mr Freeman’s comments drew one of the loudest rounds of applause in this evening’s Question Time show.
Financial Times columnist Camilla Cavendish also took aim at the Tories, warning the party had created the Reform UK phenomenon by failing to meet pledges on immigration and tax.
Ms Cavendish argued that the Reform rise is “similar to what we saw after Brexit with UKIP”.
“I think a lot of the same people are saying that they haven’t been heard. The Conservatives made a lot of promises – particularly around immigration and tax – that they didn’t deliver on.
“In a democracy it’s important to listen to those people, and I think what this outcome probably means for Labour is although you have a landslide governing majority.. you will have to make sure you’re governing for the whole country. And that does mean listening to all the people who didn’t vote with one of the two big parties.”
One young audience member revealed that after backing the Tories at a number of elections, he switched to Labour for the first time this year to kick the Government out.
Asked by Fiona Bruce what made him want to switch, he replied: “I’d just had enough of the Tories basically”.
The camera cut to George Freeman sadly nodding along to this statement.
New minister Peter Kyle said the Labour Party accepts that the politics has changed the minute after the election concluded, and they don’t take anything for granted at the next election.
