Greg Hands made a laughable case for the Tories on Sky News
The Tories were royally trounced in the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections last night. Labour overturned huge Tory majorities to win both the seats.
Tory party chairman Greg Hands doesn’t seem to have quite understood the scale of the defeat. He appeared on Sky News this morning and was asked whether the Tories need to change their policies and approach to governing after their defeats.
Responding to the question, he said “Conservatives are not feeling sufficiently incentivised at the moment to come out and vote Conservative. As we saw in last night’s very low turnout by-elections, it was principally Conservatives not showing up to vote that was our biggest issue.”
Then asked whether the prime minister Rishi Sunak should take responsibility for the by-election losses, Hands made an utterly laughable claim.
He said: “Don’t forget that the two by-elections were caused by legacy issues that predated Rishi Sunak of course. But I think the public can see Rishi Sunak – and I feel that on the doorstep, the conversations that I had Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth – people were happy with the job Rishi Sunak is doing as prime minister. There’s still a number of legacy issues related to the party – specifically the reason for those two by-elections taking place.”
Apparently, the voters of Tamworth are so “happy” with Sunak’s record in government that they voted to overturn the biggest numerical majority ever in a by-election, and deliver the largest Tory to Labour swing in a by-election since 1945…
“I think we fought good campaigns,” Hands continued, not knowing when to stop digging, going on to add: “We had excellent candidates, and we’ll be hopeful of regaining those two seats at the general election expected next year.”
If that’s a good Tory campaign, we can all hope they run a bad one at the next general election…
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy of development at Left Foot Forward
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