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Conservative recriminations over the party’s calamitous general election defeat began on Tuesday, as parliament returned and more than 400 Labour MPs crammed into a packed House of Commons chamber.
Rishi Sunak convened his new shadow cabinet at which “frank discussions” — led by potential Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch — were held on the reasons for last week’s result.
Badenoch criticised Sunak for not consulting his cabinet before calling a snap July 4 election and for his “disastrous” decision to return early from D-Day commemorations, according to people briefed on the meeting.
“Kemi wanted to speak out for all the people who lost their seats last week, including Penny Mordaunt,” said one Tory close to Badenoch, the new shadow housing minister. “She wanted to have an honest debate about what happened.”
Mordaunt, former leader of the Commons, lost her seat in Portsmouth, which has strong military connections and where Sunak’s D-Day blunder — for which he apologised — resonated strongly.
Conservative officials said Badenoch described Sunak’s decision to call the snap election without consulting senior colleagues — a decision opposed by Tory campaign chief Isaac Levido — as verging on “unconstitutional”. The remarks were first reported in The Times.
Sunak’s allies confirmed there were “frank discussions” at the shadow cabinet meeting about the Conservatives’ disastrous defeat, while former chancellor Jeremy Hunt tried to explain why Sunak had gone to the polls earlier than expected on July 4.
“Jeremy said the advice from Treasury officials was that he would not have been able to deliver tax cuts in the autumn,” one person briefed on the discussions said.
Hunt told his colleagues that public sector pay demands would have used up the Tory government’s fiscal headroom and that over the summer another 135,000 households every month would have paid higher costs on their mortgages as their fixed-rate deals ended.
“That would have dwarfed any feelgood factor from Bank of England rate cuts,” the person briefed on the discussions said.
Meanwhile parliament began sitting on Tuesday for the first time since the election, as MPs assembled to reappoint Sir Lindsay Hoyle as the Commons Speaker.
Hoyle’s re-election marks the start of a new phase of UK politics, with Sir Keir Starmer’s Parliamentary Labour party so large that many of his 411 MPs had to watch proceedings from the visitor’s gallery.
The first sitting highlighted the brutal shift in power, with only 121 Conservatives remaining, and with 72 Liberal Democrats replacing as the third-largest group a shrunken Scottish National party with just nine MPs.
Starmer said the new parliament was “the most diverse parliament by race and gender this House has ever seen”, adding that it had “the largest cohort of LGBT MPs of any parliament in the world”.
Sunak confirmed he would continue to serve his Richmond constituency in North Yorkshire, saying that to represent local people was the “greatest honour” and that it “keeps you grounded”.
The Tory leader has said he would stay on in an interim capacity until new arrangements are put in place to choose his successor, with his allies saying he was expected to continue until the autumn.
For Sir Ed Davey, Lib Dem leader, it was a moment of celebration as his party reclaimed its position as the third largest party at Westminster.
He will now have the SNP’s spacious old offices near the Commons chamber and will get to ask two questions of the prime minister every week, instead of only one every six weeks.
On Tuesday he assembled his Lib Dem MPs for a photo shoot in Westminster Hall, but only after promising parliamentary authorities that he would not stage stunts like he did during his colourful election campaign.
For 335 out of the 650 MPs this was their first time on the green Commons benches and many were still finding their way around. One new MP became stuck in a revolving door on Monday night.
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, made his first remarks in the Commons after seven previous attempts to become an MP. He and his four fellow Reform MPs were “the new kids on the block”, Farage said.
While the first day in the Commons is usually marked by generous tributes and light humour, Farage defied convention, stating Hoyle had acted with “great neutrality” unlike his predecessor, the pro-EU John Bercow.
“You act with great neutrality, unlike the little man who was there before you and besmirched the office and tried to overturn the biggest democratic decision of this country,” Farage said, referring to Brexit. His comments were met with groans in the chamber.
Meanwhile, the SNP held a “memorial service” in Portcullis House as staff gathered to express commiserations to colleagues who would not return after the party was eviscerated at the polls. The SNP’s nine MPs now compares to 48 after the 2019 election.
