Speaking to Breitbart London, Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said that the next Tory leader must return the party to the conservative principles its voters believe in and reject the metropolitan liberal elite tendencies of the soon-to-be-former government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The MP for North West Leicestershire, Andrew Bridgen, who was one of the forces behind forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said that the Conservative Party cannot continue to score own-goals by pushing left-wing agenda items of the Labour Party but rather implement the small-c conservative policies to deal with the domestic and international challenges facing the UK.
“I’ve served on the benches of three Conservative governments for three different prime ministers, this is the government that had the biggest Conservative majority and yet it’s probably the least conservative government I’ve served in,” Bridgen told Breitbart London. “What we need to do now is to elect a real conservative as a leader on real conservative principles.”
In particular, Bridgen said that the government that follows Boris Johnson should reject his green agenda and focus on more practical forms of achieving energy independence, calling for an immediate return to fracking and using the oil reserves in the North Sea while developing small-scale, modular nuclear power reactors.
“We’ve got two and a half years potentially until the next general election and I’m convinced that if we stick to those principles and deliver for the people they will reward us by putting us back in government.”
“There’s no love for the Labour Party or Keir Starmer, given what’s gone on in government over the past six or seven months, they should be ahead by 20 points in the polls, they are not. A new leader could easily close the five or six-point gap in the polls between us and the opposition.
“It’s all very winnable, it’s all in play. We must start with the right leader, they must be a conservative with conservative principles,” he said.
When pressed on whom he believes would be the right man for the job, Mr Bridgen pointed to Lord David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, who resigned from his post late last year in protest against Boris Johnson’s heavy-handed coronavirus lockdowns and pursuing leftist policy goals such as the Net Zero green agenda.
“He [Lord Frost] may not be able to [take the job] because he is in the House of Lords but it is someone with those principles that would deliver for us and the country.”
Turning attention to the legacy of Prime Minsiter Boris Johnson, Mr Bridgen said that it was “fairly awful” at the moment, but said that history may look upon him more kindly, noting that Johnson had to deal with several crises during his tenure, including trying to break through the logjam of Brexit negotiations, the Chinese coronavirus, and the war in Ukraine, which Brigen noted was more than many prime ministers would face “if they were in government for 20 years”.
In the end, the specific scandal that finally broke the camel’s back and sunk Mr Johnson was his decision to promote Christopher Pincher MP to deputy whip despite being made aware of allegations that he had groped a young man, actions which he reportedly repeated at the Carlton Club late last month.
Bridgen quipped: “He’s been a lucky politician at times. It’s interesting he was brought down by a sex scandal he wasn’t involved in.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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