Leaderless, rudderless, purposeless – the Tories have just one chance to stave off extinction | Justine Greening

The Tories were once the ‘natural party of government’. Now they’re not even the natural party of opposition

Justine Greening was the Conservative MP for Putney from 2005 to 2019

It’s impossible not to congratulate the Labour party on its historic victory. Keir Starmer has taken his party on a journey back into government. He has brought Labour back from the fringes of British politics and made it a mainstream party that has gained a huge electoral majority from all parts of our country. When I was appointed education secretary in 2016, I was the first person in the job to have been educated at a comprehensive school. It is welcome to see a cabinet where state-educated ministers are finally the norm, not the exception. When the nation’s decision-makers have shared the lived experience of the vast majority of the population, this surely makes for a stronger, better and fairer government. Everyone in the country should wish Labour well with their mission to break down barriers to opportunity.

As for the Conservative party? It would be naive for anyone to think that things can only get better. The last few days have been marked by the depressingly predictable appearances of Suella Braverman and David Frost, in a political equivalent of Return of the Living Dead. Frost, a man who may well have never won a raffle let alone an election, and Braverman, a politician so inept she thought it was a good idea to write an article attacking her own party in the final 48 hours before voters went to the polls, are among those vying to determine the future of the Conservatives.

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