Tory leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat (Image: Getty)
We will have to fight and for that the Conservative Party will need to be fighting fit.
Right now our supporters and activists feel let down and our longstanding reputation for competent government has been tarnished by false starts and unforced errors.
We now have the opportunity to begin rebuilding and charting a new course with a new leader. Counting on Labour throwing away their own majority is not enough.
I would urge my colleagues to consider who among the candidates is most likely to lead us to victory in five years’ time.
To me, the answer is clear: Tom Tugendhat. By a considerable margin, Tom is the most popular candidate with the wider public. Tom can win and deliver us victory.
Don’t miss…
Having lost two-thirds of our Parliamentary seats and hundreds of councillors up and down the country this year, it is time for dispassionate analysis of the reasons so many voters left us or simply stayed at home and to understand the scale of change that will be required to turn the situation around. I fully believe this is possible, but only under decisive, compassionate leadership.
The problem is not that our Conservative offer has been dry or boring or that we have not believed enough in our own ideology.
The problem is that successive governments made promises, but we did not deliver and much of the necessary debate about how we address the big issues of the day was played out in a public psychodrama.
Polling before and throughout the General Election consistently showed that voters like Conservative policies, but did not trust us to deliver on them.
If we are to return to government in five years’ time, if we are to perform well in the Holyrood and Senedd, mayoral and council elections in the meantime, we must remain ruthlessly focussed on re-establishing credibility and our reputation as responsible stewards of government.
Tom is a good and honest man who acts with integrity, which are the qualities which should be most highly prized in a potential leader, given the deficit of trust we currently have with the public.
Tom has dedicated his adult life to public service, in the Commons and in the Army. I have been consistently impressed by his work to keep the United Kingdom together, free, and prosperous.
He is more than qualified to hold Sir to account, reinvigorate Conservative values and lead us to victory in the next General Election.
As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I am excited by Tom’s vision and optimism for the party and the country.
We will not be able to move forward if we continue relitigating the battles of recent years or if we remain inside the ‘Westminster bubble’.
We must move forward: the alternative is a decade on the political fringes from which we will be powerless to stop Labour inflicting onto the country so much more of the pain we have already witnessed in their short time in office.
I am very proud to endorse Tom as the leader who will take our party forward and provide the people of the United Kingdom with the competent and bold vision for our future they are crying out for.
Sarah Bool is the Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire