RISHI SUNAK spent his weekend calling up Tory MPs who lost their seats at the general election and apologised to them for the Conservative party's rout in the general election, The Telegraph reports.
One of the Conservative politicians told the daily that Sunak appeared emotional and sympathetic during the call and took his time to chat with them.
This was the worst-ever election result for the Conservative party and scores of Tory MPs – including 12 Cabinet members – lost their seats.
The party lost 252 seats out of the 372 seats it was defending. While most of them were trounced by Labour rivals, some also lost to Liberal Democrats, which enjoyed a huge bump by increasing its tally to 71, from just 11 seats in 2019.
The notable losers included Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, defence secretary Grant Shapps, Welsh secretary David TC Davies, transport secretary Mark Harper, attorney general Victoria Prentis and veterans minister Johnny Mercer. All these members of the Sunak cabinet lost to Labour rivals.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan, justice secretary Alex Chalk, science secretary Michelle Donelan, culture secretary Lucy Frazer and illegal immigration minister Michael Tomlinson fell to the Liberal Democrats.
The former prime minister had on Friday offered a blanket apology to the British public at large in his speech on the steps of Downing Street.
The Tory vote share was 25.8 per cent – worse than the previous lowest of 29.2 per cent recorded by the Duke of Wellington in 1832.
Interestingly, former Tory chancellor George Osborne observed that Sunak had led the party to its “Waterloo”.
The Duke of Wellington’s forces had defeated Napoleon's army at Waterloo in 1815, but he later led the party to a historic defeat.
Former cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg felt the Conservative party had taken its voters for granted. “We have no divine right to votes. We need to win voters at every single election," he said.
He pointed out that the failure to stop the boats and the government's inability to control overall migration had cost the party dear.
