CONSERVATIVE MP Sir Peter Bottomley has declared the Tory party still has a strong chance at the next election – provided MPs have belief that they can win.
Speaking to Alastair Stewart, Mr Bottomley told GB News: “I think the encouraging thing is that people thought Ted Heath couldn’t win the 1970 election, they thought John Major couldn’t win the 1992 election. So, if we can have a belief, we can win. We need to do those things now, which will make it likely, rather than wait until we possibly lose, and then do things that make it like we win this time.
Commenting on the number of Tory MPs who are deciding not to stand for re-election he continued: “It’s fairly normal. The first member of parliament I remember meeting was a man called Nigel Davis, who got elected in 1950 and stood down in 1951 because he thought it wasn’t quite for him. People who are former MPs can do amazing jobs, you only have to look around to see that there’s one Labour MP, for example, who did one term is now chief economist at the Institute of Directors. There are all sorts of contributions people can make outside of the Palace of Westminster. So I think that nine out of over 350 MPs have already said in front of the deadline of early December, `they’re not standing again, that’s a normal number, not an abnormal number.”
Mr Bottomley said the Tories could also make a mark in Scotland adding: “I think if we get the approach right in Scotland now that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have made a mistake over devolution and constitution, then we can get the Tories up in Scotland. We can make people think that actually having the anti-Labour coalition called the Tory party working is better than having the anti-Conservative one, which will do, I think, and many other people think, a lot of damage to the country’s long-term interests.”
