Top Tories: hard Brexit stance could lose us next election

The Tory party could lose the next general election if Theresa May alienates its core of moderate supporters by imitating Ukip and pushing through a hard Brexit, a group of former Conservative ministers and MPs says.

The warning to the prime minister from the party’s senior ranks comes after Tory voters turned to the pro-EU Lib Dems in droves in Thursday’s Richmond Park byelection, delivering one of the biggest electoral shocks of recent times.

As recriminations grew among Conservative and Labour supporters over the outcome – which saw the Lib Dems make their first parliamentary byelection gain in a decade with a 21.75% swing from pro-Brexit former Tory MP Zac Goldsmith – Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, told Conservatives that his party was now targeting dozens of Tory seats.

Writing in the Observer, the former Conservative cabinet minister, Dominic Grieve, ex-foreign office minister Alistair Burt and former transport minister Claire Perry, along with education select committee chair Neil Carmichael and Bath MP Ben Howlett, say the Richmond outcome must serve as a wake-up call to the prime minister.

“The Conservative party needs to be alert that there is a moderate core of Conservative voters, who voted Remain, and who want to hear the Conservative government speaking above the noise of the Brexiters,” they say. “They do not want the Conservative party to be Ukip-lite, nor to hear that their desire for a negotiated Brexit … is somehow an attempt to delay or simply an expression of Remoaning.

“They want the Conservative leadership to speak for them, too, and Richmond may be a reminder that their votes have another destination if we don’t get this right. That moderate voice is crucial for the party to keep the votes of the middle ground who could lose the Conservative party the next election if they take their votes elsewhere.”

They also demand that May spells out the broad outline of the government’s negotiating position on Brexit before triggering the formal exit process under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty next March.

“As well as making clear that it will pursue its own course, and not be pushed into a corner by those who only advocate a hard Brexit, a government decision to publish its high-level objectives for negotiations would not only bring some certainty into that issue, but also be likely to suggest a tone which would be welcomed by a key group of its supporters. The vast majority of Conservative voters would unite behind that and the prime minister, trusting her to deliver the best Brexit possible.”

Since Lib Dem Sarah Olney pulled off her spectacular win, having campaigned against a hard Brexit that would see the UK pull out of the single market, the government has insisted that it will not shift its approach to Brexit and that the result changes nothing.

On Saturday, however, Farron sought to exploit Tory discomfort. He said: “My message to Conservative MPs is: we are coming for you. The result in Richmond Park shows that liberal Britain is fighting back against this divisive Brexit Conservative government. It was a vote for Britain remaining open, tolerant and united.”

Labour’s candidate, Christian Wolmar, suffered a catastrophic result, losing his deposit, and prompting some in the party to call for it to consider electoral pacts in future elections. Labour MPs now fear the party faces being squeezed between the resurgent Lib Dems in large parts of the south, and Ukip under its new leader Paul Nuttall in the Midlands and north.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn used a speech in Prague to insist that his Labour party would not compromise on its belief in the value of immigration, despite calls from some of his MPs for a harder line in the face of Ukip demands for immigration cuts. In a speech to the Party of European Socialists, the Labour leader said: “It can be difficult to convince the long-term unemployed that the reason there is no work is not that immigrants are stealing their jobs but the result of the economic programme of the right that has failed to deliver sustainable growth, security and rising living standards for all.

“It can be hard to make clear that our public services are being run down because of years of austerity and predatory privatisation, rather than overspending and government waste, but it is vital that we do. We cannot abandon our socialist principles because we are told this is the only way to win power. That is nonsense.”

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer also demanded more clarity from May over Brexit. Before a Commons debate this week, he said: “Instead of providing certainty over the UK’s basic aims, the government has given mixed messages, veering from the extreme version of Brexit, suggested by the prime minister’s party conference speech, to the undefined version of Brexit, suggested by the Nissan deal, and David Davis’s comments that EU Budget contributions may continue post-Brexit.

Labour’s former Europe spokesman, Pat McFadden, said it was time to address the concerns of working people who had voted Leave. “We’ve got to think on the scale of a Marshall plan to transform opportunities in working-class communities – giving a real answer, rather than someone to blame. Labour’s moments of victory – 1945, 1964 and 1997 – have all been when we seemed to understand the future and had a real plan for it that people could believe in.”