Rishi Sunak’s government is still “buzzing with ideas”, energy secretary Grant Shapps has said, amid growing Conservative anger at the local election results.
Speaking on Sunday morning, the veteran cabinet minister said the prime minister would not be changing course in response to the kicking the party got at the polls.
Former home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at a grassroots party conference in Bournemouth on Saturday to attack the prime minister for overseeing the “managed decline” of the Tories.
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, also told members “we are drifting” and “no longer have that inspirational leader and those visionary policies that people can go out and vote for”.
The pair were speaking at the event hosted by the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), an internal Tory group that is supportive of Boris Johnson.
But Shapps rejected the criticism from his former party colleagues and said Sunak had “stabilised” the party.
He told Sky News Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme it was not “written in the stars” that the Conservatives would lose the next election.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, later this morning, Shapps said the government had “a lot of energy to get things done still.”
“We have a great opportunity because we know that we’re buzzing with ideas,” he said, adding the “mood” in the government was “one of steely determination”.
Sunak has bet his future on delivering on five priorities, halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting NHS waiting lists and stopping the boats.
“We are not going to be diverted from those priorities,” Shapps told the BBC.
Other Conservatives have hit out at those on the right of the party like Patel and Dorries.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chairman of the Commons defence committee criticised his colleagues for stoking divisions.
Writing in The Times he warned: “A drag anchor of a right-wing caucus is in our ranks, and it has already written off any prospects of victory in 2024.”
Meanwhile, after giving a speech in central London on Saturday morning, Labour leader Keir Starmer said: “I have always said that among Sunak’s weaknesses is that he didn’t actually win a race to be leader of his party. The problem that gives him is that he doesn’t have a mandate for change.”