Rishi Sunak is ‘p****d off’ about one election loss as local MP blames left-wing policies
A local activist has said one policy offering by the candidate was ‘insane'.
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Rishi Sunak is reported in a “very bad mood” about one particular local election loss, despite the wide scale Tory thrashing.
Among Mr Sunak’s election humiliations last week, one of the most embarrassing was the loss of the North Yorkshire metro mayoralty.
The new mayoralty, one of the 10 the Tories failed to win, covers Mr Sunak’s own true blue constituency of Richmond (Yorks), meaning he now has a Labour mayor for both his constituency home and his London address.
Labour’s David Skaith beat the Tories’ Keane Duncan by 15,000 votes.
Despite initially refusing to say where the Prime Minister voted in the local elections, on Saturday it finally emerged that he used a postal vote to back Mr Duncan in North Yorkshire rather than support Susan Hall’s bid to defeat Sadiq Khan.
It’s now been reported that Mr Sunak is “in a very bad mood” about his hometown defeat, with the result in Tory heartlands being described as a “cock-up”.
The Sun goes further to claim the Prime Minister is even “p****d off” about the defeat.
Candidate Keane Duncan was ridiculed by Tories during the campaign over his various Labour-sounding pledges to both nationalise a hotel and set up a community bank.
Mr Duncan’s most eye-catching pledge was the nationalisation of the once-iconic Grand Hotel in Scarborough, claiming it would “kickstart the town’s regeneration”.
His policy platform has now been panned by local Tory MP Sir Robert Goodwill, who suggested the left-wing offering may have spooked local voters.
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While Sir Robert described Mr Duncan as a “very good candidate”, he confessed that there were a “few eyebrows raised” by the radical pledges, including half-price homes for first-time buyers.
Of his hotel nationalisation pledge, Sir Robert warned: “We need to think carefully about policies like that. Certainly, as far as my constituents are concerned, there were a lot of eyebrows raised about the Grand Hotel. Maybe some of the ideas need a bit more work and certainly eyebrows are raised. Nationalising hotels is something you’d expect the Labour candidate to be talking about.”
He added: “Don’t forget North Yorkshire is very large, so spending a big slice of your budget in Scarborough is not going to go down very well in Skipton or Harrogate, or even in York”.
A local Conservative source has told The Express: “It was the Grand what did it. An unrealistic policy that nobody thought was credible.
“He didn’t discuss the idea with anyone outside of his campaign team. They would have told him how insane it was. He blew all his credibility on that one announcement. Whoever advised him needs to give their head a wobble.”
Of the 11 Metro Mayoralties in England, the Tories won just one at the local elections, with popular Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen clinging on.
The Conservatives lost the West Midlands mayoralty by just 1,400 votes.
