Suella Braverman has attacked Rishi Sunak as he appealed to Tory rank-and-file members ahead of a Tory leadership campaign.
O former Secretary of the Interiorwho was re-elected to her seat of Fareham and Waterlooville, criticized her own party for allowing MPs, not members, to remove Boris Johnson and replace him with Sunak.
“It was members who chose an election-winning prime minister, in the form of Boris Johnson, who led us to success in 2019,” she told the People’s Conservatives conference on Tuesday.
“And yet it was MPs who removed him and replaced him with MP-installed candidate Rishi Sunak, who led us to our biggest defeat.
“This was truly a way to rob members of their right, their voice, their word. We cannot allow this to happen again.”
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Johnson won a large majority in the 2019 general election but resigned after facing a vote of confidence.
Liz Truss was then voted in by members, but after stepping down 45 days later, Sunak became Prime Minister when Penny Mordaunt withdrew from the race before it could go to a member vote.
Braverman is now expected to be the frontrunner in the current leadership race.
She appealed to rank-and-file Conservative members by saying the Conservatives need to “restore trust, not just with the electorate, but actually within our own party.”
“The integrity of the Conservative Party has been collapsing for a long time,” he added.
“Grassroots members have been marginalized, disenfranchised and treated very poorly, to be honest.”
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Weakening of democracy
Braverman didn’t hold back when criticizing the rest of his party, saying local associations “who knew their communities best” were “totally ignored and disrespected” when it came to choosing candidates.
She said “unsuitable and frankly unsuitable candidates” were parachuted in “because they were friends of those in leadership, because they worked in Number 10”.
“A total weakening of democracy in our party,” he added.
Braverman also said the party needs to “restore credibility in the core conservative policies that unite” members.
This includes immigration “because we have been weak, we have been squeamish, we have not been able to resolve this very pressing concern.”
Braverman said the Conservatives under Rishi Sunak had lost credibility. Photo: PA
‘Imitating work’
Braverman added that the Conservatives were “emulating Labour, it was difficult to distinguish the two parties” and said the Conservatives needed to say they were “unapologetically patriotic”.
“For a long time we have been nervous. We have been reticent, we have been shy about showing this love and aspiration for our country,” she said.
“We need to be the party that makes it clear that we are on the side of the grafters, the people who fight, the people who take risks to improve their lives and the lives of their families and their communities.
“We want to be the party that says it’s not where you come from, it’s where you’re going.”
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On Monday, Ms. Braverman spoke at the National Conservatism conference in Washington D.C., where she accused “many, many conservative politicians” of being “liberal and progressive” supporting the raising of the Progress Pride flag, which represents the LGBTQ+ community, in government department buildings.
She said: “The flag of Progress tells me, tells me a monstrous thing: that I was a member of a government that presided over the mutilation of children in our hospitals and in our schools.”
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
