Sir Geoffrey Cox has warned the Conservative Party will be “annihilated” as a credible opposition in the House of Commons if Labour replicates its current poll lead at the general election and wins a vast majority.
The former attorney general argued a landslide election victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour would be “bad for democracy”.
He also said the Conservatives needed to show voters “why we should be elected again”.
A YouGov poll released on Thursday placed the Conservative Party on 19 per cent of the vote, some distance behind Labour’s standing on 44 per cent.
Reform UK, the restyled Brexit Party, recorded its highest ever poll rating with 15 per cent of the vote — placing it only four points behind Rishi Sunak’s party,
It came as the prime minister sought to unify his fractious party ahead of what could be a brutal set of local elections.
Addressing the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers on Wednesday evening, the prime minister called on his party to unite following weeks of media coverage about supposed plots against him by MPs.
The Conservative Party is expected to launch its campaign for the local elections on 2 May in Derbyshire today. Defending 900-plus seats and 18 councils, they are widely expected to lose a significant number of both.
Speaking about the party’s electoral prospects more broadly, former attorney general Sir Geoffrey told GB News: “The Conservative Party represents a cluster of important values, ideals and principles which if the country is without, it is a very dangerous thing for democracy.
“At the moment, an 80-seat majority is big but the proposal at the moment, the suggestion that Labour might win a 200-seat majority effectively annihilates any credible opposition.
“That’s bad for democracy, but on our part, we need to show why we should be elected again, why our party stands for really important values and principles.”
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