Ousted MP says Conservative Party is full of Remainers and should be abolished
Winston Churchill's grandson Nicholas Soames and Marcus Fysh clash in furious Tory bloodletting after disastrous election result .
Tory fury over the scale of the defeat boiled over as an ousted MP said the party should be shut down.
Brexiteer Marcus Fysh said the Conservatives that have survived have no desire to make the most of Britain’s departure from the European Union and will never be able to regain power.
Lord Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, called the outspoken MP a “total idiot”.
Mr Fysh hit back, saying the Tory peer had “traded on grandfather’s name his whole life”.
He said the Conservatives have become a centre left party full of “Remainers and wets” and need to become centre right.
“I don’t think the current Conservative MPs want to be there (centre right). That isn’t who they are. It isn’t a Conservative party in that sense and so it should no longer exist,” he told Times Radio.
Don't miss... Keir Starmer now wields astonishing power – but he haemorrhaged support [LATEST]
“Everyone is wasting their time with it and I'm just calling it how I see it, really. If it was my business I'd wind it up.
“The sooner it's put out of its misery the better, and that is what I think needs to happen. I would actually dissolve the corporate entity of the party and I would start again with a new brand, a new leader and everything.”
The clash came as three senior Conservatives expected to run for the leadership called for an honest diagnosis about what went wrong.
Suella Braverman said she was “having lots of conversations” when pressed on whether she will be making a bid for the job.
She told GB News the most pressing need is “to agree on the problem” so they can fix it.
“We need to get fighting fit and start opposing the Labour Party, because they'll use this window to bring pretty harmful things into our country,” she added.
Ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick said the first step for the party is a “proper honest diagnosis about what’s gone wrong” and called for a long leadership campaign.
He added: “I honestly don’t think that three days on from the General Election, in which we’ve just lost so many of our friends and colleagues, that it is right to have self-indulgent conversations like this,” he said.
“I think we as a party have to think very carefully about what’s happened and once we have that, unite behind that common set of true Conservative principles and move forward – and above all hold Keir Starmer to account.”
Don't miss...
Nicola Sturgeon urged to apologise after SNP's election losses [LATEST]
Tony Blair wades in to offer advice to Starmer with 3-point takedown of Reform [LATEST]
Boris Johnson warns UK 'on road to serfdom' as Starmer plots new Brexit deal [LATEST]
Former health secretary Victoria Atkins said there was still a “real opportunity” for the Tories to recover, with Labour’s support “spread very thinly, a little bit like margarine”.
“In terms of their values, their instinct they are, I believe still instinctively Conservative: they want lower taxes, they want to build a better future for their children, they want us to help them thrive in their personal lives and in their livelihoods,” she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
“And so those values are important to us all. What we need to do is to make sure that we are acting on those values, but also ensuring that we have policies that deliver on the sorts of issues that were being raised.”
She said: “Please don’t think I’m trying to turn away from the very loud, clear messages to us as a party, but I do observe that the support for the Labour Party in this election has spread very thinly, a little bit like margarine.”
