Chris Patten compares Rishi Sunak to a boy on a "burning deck” where everyone else has fled
Former Conservative Chairman Chris Patten has given a damning assessment of his party’s future stating he’s “not sure there is a Conservative Party anymore”, as Tories jump ship.
The Conservative peer compared Rishi Sunak’s situation to a boy being abandoned on a “burning deck” and blamed Boris Johnson and Brexit as “two of the biggest errors in modern British politics.”
Patten told the Times Radio: “I’m a Conservative, but I’m not sure there’s a Conservative Party anymore. It’s pretty questionable. I would like to feel some sympathy for the prime minister, but I don’t really because he was in favour of two of the biggest errors in modern British politics.”
He went on to describe Boris Johnson as a “moral vacuum” and laid into Sunak’s support for Brexit which Patten said has been “one of the main reasons for our economic woes today”.
In the interview, he compared Rishi Sunak to a Victorian poem: “The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled because you can’t find another Conservative who’s doing anything other than whistling past the cemetery or preparing for the future, or betting that they’re going to lose.”
He added that it was “overwhelmingly likely” Keir Starmer will win the general election but that he will be faced with “really awful problems”.
The Tory peer said: “It’s going to be bloody difficult for him and that is the legacy of 14 years of not very good Conservative government. Not very good. Blimey, that’s an understatement.”
It’s a brutal assessment of the past and future of the Conservative party which could be reckoning with an internal civil war and leadership battle, post a general election wipeout.
(Image credit: Times Radio screenshot)
Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward
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