As one of almost 250 Conservative casualties at the recent election, I can say wholeheartedly that our defeat has been a wake-up call for each and every one of us.
We lost our well-deserved reputation for good government and competence and the British people punished us at the ballot box.
As an optimist, however, I believe that we have every chance of returning to government at the next election.
But to do so, we need to rebuild. We need to show the British people that we care about the issues that they care about.
We must prove that we are not simply synonymous with infighting and division.
We therefore need to choose a leader who can unite us, take the fight to Keir Starmer and ensure that we are ready to win. That person is James Cleverly.
He is a credible, serious leader and I know that he is ready to put in the hard work needed to recover our reputation for competence and integrity.
I have known James since we were first elected together in 2015 and he was at the helm of the Conservative Party when we won our biggest election victory in a generation under Boris Johnson.
The 80-seat majority that he helped deliver allowed us to break the deadlock and finally get Brexit done and unleash the opportunities that arose from it.
Most recently, I served with James in the Home Office when he was Home Secretary. He led work to bring to an end the merry-go-round that has been plaguing our immigration system for far too long.
I watched him cut small-boat arrivals by a third, even as numbers rose elsewhere in Europe.
He signed the treaty with Rwanda and brought forward legislation to ensure that international law cannot overrule our ability to send illegal migrants to Rwanda.
It was the toughest immigration legislation ever introduced to Parliament and it underlines James’ resolve to get a grip on the issue. He made the changes that cut net migration by 300,000.
Of course, the Labour Party are already undoing the progress that we made, with over 2,000 crossings since they arrived in power just three weeks ago.
By cancelling the Rwanda partnership, they are adding tens of thousands more people to our already-creaking asylum system.
They can’t answer any of the big questions on illegal migration and asylum, and they don’t have a plan to deal with what is one of the biggest concerns facing the British public.
James is the leader that can truly hold Labour to account and provide the opposition to Keir Starmer that the public rightly deserves.
James will ensure that our Conservative values of security, prosperity, and patriotism unite and guide us as we hold the Labour government to account and prepare ourselves to fight to get back into government.
I have no doubt that he is the one with the energy needed to deliver.
