Max Hastings is the latest high-profile figure to announce that they are giving up on the Tories.
The journalist and broadcaster Max Hastings, who was the editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1995, has said he will be voting Labour at the next election, over the ‘dreadful’ Tories.
Describing the Prime Minister as a ‘loser,’ Hastings spoke of the dismay of the Tories’ push to the right and referred to the party’s membership as a bunch of “Flat Earthers” who are “almost without exception fantasists.”
“These people thought Liz Truss was the answer to the nation’s problems. As long as these 200,000 Flat Earthers around the country have a decisive voice, then I’m very gloomy about the Conservative Party’s prospects,” he said.
In an attack on Suella Braverman, Hastings described the Home Secretary’s policies as “grotesque…” He also referred to the influence of both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage on the Conservative Party as “malign,” and called Brexit a “disaster.”
“I think Sunak’s fate at the back end of this dreadful government is deeply unenviable, but there he is. And, of course, he’s always going to be remembered as the tail ender – the loser,” he said in an interview with the New European.
The veteran journalist said Sunak is a “decent person”, before adding: “But is he a leader? I’m afraid not. I’ve always been sceptical whether people who are school head boys are likely to be good leaders.”
On Boris Johnson, Hastings, who as editor of the Telegraph gave Johnson his first job as a young reporter in what proved to be an incredibly consequential decision, referred to the former PM as “the most selfish and irresponsible human being I think I’ve ever met,” who had helped leave the Tory party as a group of “factions of the right.”
He added that the “fear of Farage, who now threatens to rejoin the Tories, has made cowards of much of the party’s leadership”.
Max Hastings is the latest high-profile figure to announce that they are giving up on the Tories. Iceland boss Richard Walker quit the Conservative party over Sunak’s “flip-flopping” on HS2 and Net Zero. He said he was “open to persuasion” on who to back at the next election.
Hotelier, Sir Rocco Forte – who gave £100,000 to the party to help fund the 2019 general election – accused the Tories of reaping what they had sowed, claiming that “incompetence” had driven donors away.
Similar concerns were voiced by John Caudwell, the Phones4U founder, who said he will not back Sunak after his U-turn on Net Zero pledges – and revealed he was thinking of giving to Labour instead.
At this week’s Labour conference, former Bank of England governor Mark Carney endorsed the party. In a pre-recorded video played for shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ speech, the Canadian economist, who was head of the Bank from 2013 to 2020, said it was “beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.”
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Twitter screen grab
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