A former minister has warned that the Conservative Party will not win an election later this year if it undergoes an “ideological shove to the right”.
Paul Scully, who has served as a minister across multiple departments since 2020, justified his comments by saying that a rightwing “core vote” is at risk of dying off.
He told Sky News: “If you just have an ideological shove to the right, … then just mathematically you can’t win an election.
“There’s not enough people in that corner to actually win an election. The core vote will die off or move away anyway.”
He added: “If I’m in the swimming pool and I’m trying to get people to come in, I’m not going to sit there in the deep end and say ‘come and join me’. You swim in the shallow end, in the middle ground or something like that and say ‘let me explain why you should come with me’.”
In a statement on X/Twitter yesterday, the former minister for London announced his decision to stand down as an MP at the next election.
The statement suggested that the Conservative Party had “lost its way” and had become “fuelled by division”.
Scully wrote: “I have told my local association that I won’t be contesting the next General Election. Over the last nine years it’s been a privilege to represent in Parliament, the area which I called home for 35 years”
He added: “Fuelled by division, the party has lost its way and needs to get a clear focus which I hope the budget can start to provide. It needs a vision beyond crisis management which can appeal to a wider section of the electorate including younger people.”
He also said that during his nine-year career in parliament he had “lost my marriage and seen two colleagues murdered”.
Scully decision’s to leave parliament comes after he was criticised for claiming there are “no-go areas” in parts of London and Birmingham where Muslim people live.
During a BBC London interview last week, Scully suggested that “parts of” Tower Hamlets and Birmingham Sparkhill are “no-go areas mainly because of doctrine and mainly because people are sort of abusing in many ways their religion”.
He later apologised for the comments.
In May 2023, Scully announced he would seek the Conservative Party nomination to be mayor of London. However, he did not make the final shortlist in the contest, eventually losing out to former leader of the London Conservatives, Susan Hall, who has been criticised for her rightwing views.
