After losing his seat, Sir Robert Buckland said: “The truth is now with the Conservatives facing this electoral Armageddon, it will be like a group of bald men arguing over a comb”
Election 2024: Robert Buckland ‘fed up’ with Conservative colleagues
The first senior Tory to lose their seat has said he is “fed up” of his own party in a brutal takedown live on the BBC.
Sir Robert Buckland slammed Conservative colleagues for saying “stupid” and “inflammatory” things and said he was sick of their “personal agendas”. The former Justice Secretary lost to Labour’s Heidi Alexander, who won a majority of 9,606 and wiped out Sir Robert’s majority of more than 6,000 in Swindon South.
The senior Conservative savaged “astonishing ill discipline within the party” and took a swipe at Suella Braverman’s Daily Telegraph article, which on Tuesday criticised the Tories. He said this was not an “isolated example” and warned it would be a “disastrous mistake” if his party was to move more to the right in response to their looming defeat.
Speaking to the BBC after his loss, Sir Robert said: “I’m fed up of personal agendas, and jockeying for position. The truth is now with the Conservatives facing this electoral Armageddon, it will be like a group of bald men arguing over a comb. I came into politics to actually do Government and to responsibly exercise power in order to make change in this country. I did that in office for many years and I’m proud of my legacy.”
In a stark intervention, he said: “I’m fed up of performance art politics. I’ve watched colleagues in the Conservative Party strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds and say stupid things they have no evidence for, instead of concentrating on doing the job they were elected to do. I’ve had enough of it.
“I want the Conservative Party to get back to the ethos of doing stuff well and being competent, not pretending to please the media. If we can get back to that then I think we have more than a fighting chance at the next election but we need to do it quickly and we need to wake up now.”
Sir Robert continued: “I think we have seen in this election astonishing ill discipline within the party and we can see articles being written before votes have been cast in the general election about the party heading to defeat and what the prognosis should be. It is spectacularly unprofessional and ill disciplined and that’s not the Conservative Party I joined or have been an active member of for nearly 40 years.
“I expect more from colleagues. I also expect colleagues in senior office to actually get a grip of their brief and portfolio and actually understand that politics is about hard choices. It’s about doing the detail. Now the Prime Minister understands that and is an admirable example of how to do the detail.”
