Tory leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat has ruled out doing a deal with Reform UK and Nigel Farage for making “deeply irresponsible and dangerous” comments during the riots.
In a speech in London, the Shadow Security Minister warned that public trust has been eroded, partly caused by the spread of misinformation and political rhetoric by people like Mr Farage. It comes as the battle to succeed Rishi Sunak gathers pace, with six candidates jostling to become the next Tory leader.
Mr Tughendhat took aim at the Reform UK leader for amplifying conspiracy theories that the truth was being withheld over the Southport knife attack and for being slow to condemn the riots that swept through the country. He said: “This is not leadership. It is deeply irresponsible and dangerous.”
Asked by the Mirror if he would rule out doing a deal with Reform UK if he became Tory leader, he said: “Yes.” The Tory MP also said Mr Farage would not be welcome in the party under his leadership.
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Reform UK Chief Whip Lee Anderson accused him of trying to “gaslight and shift the blame from their failures and broken promises over mass immigration”. He added: “The awful riots and social unrest we have seen on our streets have been sown by years of Tory failure.”
“If they think attacking Reform UK will win back the millions of voters lost to us at the last election then it just shows how arrogant they are”.
Mr Tugendhat said the disorder seen on the UK’s streets was “completely unacceptable” and condemned “racist thugs” for their part in the unrest. He said the nation needed to do “serious soul searching” about the riots and accused politicians of a “culture of denial” over the causes of recent acts of violence.
“Too often, over the last two decades or more, we have avoided being brutally honest, preferring instead the warmth and false comfort of denial and complacency,” Mr Tugendhat said. “We need to end the culture of denial – the tendency to move hurriedly on from acts of extreme violence, to obfuscate about the identities and motives of the perpetrators.”
He also argued that Home Office minister Jess Phillips should have been “sacked” by the Prime Minister after accusing her of trying to defend groups of masked men gathering in her Birmingham Yardley constituency. Ms Phillips tweeted at the time: “These people came to this location because it has been spread that racists were coming to attack them. This misinformation was spread entirely to create this content.”
He also said X boss Elon Musk’s claim that civil war was inevitable amid the disorder was “delusional” and “simply false”. He added: “The question as to how we operate on social media is a difficult one,” he said. “I refuse to be on TikTok because the algorithm is set by a foreign dictatorship. Others make different choices.”
The billionaire X owner has been embroiled in a war with words against the UK Government over the riots. He firing off a series of wild tweets about Keir Starmer, who he branded “two-tier Keir” in reference to controversial complaints touted by right-wingers that not all disorder is policed in the same way.
Mr Tugendhat is battling to lead the Tories against former Home Secretaries James Cleverly and Dame Priti Patel, ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick, former Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and ex Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride. He ran to be leader after Boris Johnson quit in 2022 but was eliminated in the third round of the contest.
It comes as a poll found that an overwhelming majority of the public don’t care who becomes the next Tory leader. Some 62% said they aren’t bothered about who takes over from Rishi Sunak after the party’s General Election disaster. Even 36% of Tory voters said they didn’t care who takes the top job.
Polling firm Ipsos found a “significant proportion” of the public don’t know much about the leading candidates. Asked who would be the best for the job, 15% opted for two fictional MPs.