Red Wall voters ‘will punish Tories for ousting Boris Johnson’

Red Wall voters will punish the Conservatives at the next election for ousting Boris Johnson, one of the party’s most powerful regional politicians has warned.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, Ben Houchen, the Mayor of Tees Valley, said it was “blindingly obvious” that whoever made it into the final two of the leadership race would not have the same support among the Tory grassroots as the outgoing Prime Minister.

He predicted there would be a “backlash” against the party for “getting rid of Boris” whether Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak wins the leadership contest.

A poll published earlier this week found that if Mr Johnson’s name was added to the ballot paper, he would be elected as Prime Minister by the party membership.

The survey found that 68 per cent of members would rather Mr Johnson remained than Mr Sunak taking over, while 63 per cent would prefer him to Ms Truss.

Mr Houchen said: “You’re always going to see these three person polls come out with Boris on top, another reason why I didn’t think we should have got rid of him.

“And also, to be fair, we’ve seen that reflected in places like Teesside. Lots of first time Conservative voters are completely bewildered, confused and actually quite upset that the Conservative Party got rid of Boris.

“I think we will ultimately be worse off at the general election for not having Boris Johnson.”

More than 10,000 Tory members are thought to have backed a “Boris ballot” campaign to change the leadership rules to insert Mr Johnson as a candidate in the final round.

The campaign, spearheaded by Lord Cruddas, the Tory donor and billionaire financier, had hoped to effectively give members a referendum on Mr Johnson’s decision to stand down by adding him as a third candidate.

Mr Houchen also voiced frustration that the leadership content has made the Tories seem out of touch with ordinary voters.

“It just worried me that we’d, in effect, be navel-gazing for a number of weeks, if not months, which will feel very out of touch and remote to normal people who’ll be very concerned about everyday living,” he said.

The Mayor played down concerns about blue-on-blue attacks during the contest, saying: “There’s been this kind of collective hysteria that all of a sudden this is a quite nasty contest.

“It’s really, really not. If anything, it’s quite mild and I think they could be much, much more vicious with each other.”

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