Susanna Reid skewered a senior Tory after he claimed there was “little appetite” for Labour despite the party’s landslide election victory.
Former business minister Kevin Hollinrake made the claim on ITV’s Good Morning Britain as he insisted there was no need for the Conservatives to have a quick leadership contest.
Rishi Sunak confirmed on Friday morning that he will step down as the party’s leader as soon as the mechanism for choosing his replacement is in place.
Asked for his view by Reid’s co-presenter Ed Balls, Hollinrake said: “We need to take a few months to decide exactly what went wrong and then decide the right person to take us forward and to present a viable challenge to the Labour Party.
“One very good thing for us in terms of the result last week was that there was very little appetite for a Labour government. It was a very low vote share.
“I think there’s no doubt that what we saw on the doorsteps was reflected in the national result. There was very little appetite for Keir Starmer.
“So if we can regroup, unite, get a good leader, present the alternative, I think we can be in good shape to present a viable case for a Conservative government in 2029.”
But Reid told him: “It sounds pretty remarkable that you say there was little appetite for a Labour government when they won such a huge landslide. There was clearly little appetite for Rishi Sunak and the existing Conservative government.”