10
Senior Tory criticises ‘worst campaign in my lifetime’ as frustration grows
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Recriminations have begun to fly around the Conservatives as a senior figure called the last few weeks the “worst campaign in my lifetime” and criticised the party for failing to tackle the threat from Reform.
However, a number of Tory candidates, advisers and officials are deeply frustrated with how he has run the campaign after calling a July election against the advice of his key strategist Isaac Levido.
One senior Tory party figure said on Monday it had been the “worst campaign in my lifetime”, saying that while Sunak was wholly to blame for the early election, there was a feeling that Levido could have pushed back more against the July date and that Conservative HQ should have “taken the fight to Reform” earlier.
However, the source said some people around the cabinet table had argued that the Tories should just ignore Nigel Farage’s party, and the campaign had been too frightened to tackle Reform’s arguments head-on for fear of offending voters who sympathised with them.
They also said candidates in tight marginal seats were getting zero financial or practical support, even on social media, and there was frustration that Conservative HQ had either overspent in the run-up to the election or wrongly thought it would get a last-minute deluge of funding.
Many Conservative candidates are upset that they do not feel as supported by CCHQ as they were in 2019, with top party figures and cabinet ministers having to spend time defending or winning their own seats rather than on national strategy.
The original article contains 894 words, the summary contains 253 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!