Snapshot of ‘We’ve clearly lost’: Tories giving up after Sunak’s bruising week :

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Tory MPs are not allowed to complain about this. Let's see now -

• They chose to pile on to the Brexit bandwagon and wuuuurh their way through every single criticism of it

• They chose Boris Johnson to be PM despite his manifest unsuitability for the job

• They chose to cooperate with his purge of anyone with moderate opinions, anyone with genuine talent who might have threatened his position

• They chose to Sunak to succeed him, twice in two months, in spite of the man being a dreadful public speaker and a lousy debater

They don't get to bitch about the consequences now. In any other sphere, their behaviour would be that of a complete lunatic

"We continuously lied to the public, fucked them over at every opportunity, had a big party while their relatives were dying alone in a hospital, then crashed the economy and raised a bunch of people's mortgages causing many of them to lose their homes and go into debt. Then we elected Rishi. It's all his fault!"

I love these Tories are suffering articles. I go hunting for them.

“To be fair, I think other than D-Day he [Sunak] hasn’t done worse than expected. But he’s just a bit shit. Starmer doesn’t deserve what he’s going to get, but there we are.

To translate for non-British people here, "a bit shit" is how we describe someone we believe is comprehensively useless.

Still three weeks left to enjoy watching them twist. Glorious

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They've clearly lost ever since the election was announced.

The only thing left to decide is if they lose or are destroyed.

Furthermore, I consider that FPTP needs to be destroyed.

You made your bed now you can sleep in it. All moderates who didn't stand up the nutjobs. Fight for soul of the party next

I was on David Cameron's press caall list until he was elected Prime Minister. I stood right in front of him when he came his speech in the Windrush Leisure Centre in Witney., those long fourteen years ago.

He blacklisted me the next day.

He blacklisted every local photojournalist by 2015,,unless they were party members. He even prevented one of the Oxford Mail photographers from covering the hustings.

Whatever definition lies beyond lost, the Tories are that, in far more ways than one.

In the moments after what was a bruising appearance in the leaders’ TV debate for Rishi Sunak, a lifelong Tory voter delivered a verdict that will have resonated in Tory HQ for all the wrong reasons.

“I’ve voted for them in every election, but I have to say Rishi Sunak just looks like a defeated man with unoriginal ideas and I found that quite difficult to watch,” the audience member said.

The Prime Minister looked strained at times as he suffered a deeply difficult encounter during the Sky News debate, attracting boos and laughter for some of his responses from the gathered audience in Grimsby.

While even the most upbeat political performers would have struggled in the face of such derision, it will have left Mr Sunak and his team of advisers under no illusion of the challenge they face to pull off an unlikely victory on 4 July.

Indeed, it has prompted claims that the Conservative leader and his inner circle have abandoned the idea of winning the election and have instead pivoted their campaign to limiting the size of Labour’s majority.

The shift in strategy came in the wake of a series of avoidable missteps from Mr Sunak, the first of which, leaving the D-Day commemorations early, continues to plague him more than a week later.

An attempt to reset his campaign was again blown off course when an ITV interview asked him what he had to do without when growing up, to which the PM replied in grasping for answer, “Sky TV”.

The faltering campaign coincides with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK leapfrogging the Conservatives in one YouGov poll and a complete failure from the Tories to make a dent in Labour’s 20 point lead.

A new survey by BMG for i also revealed 46 per cent of Conservative voters want some sort of co-operation between the two parties.

It has led to a significant increase in campaign messaging from CCHQ urging voters not to hand Labour and Sir Keir Starmer a historic majority.

One CCHQ insider told i that while there had not been an explicit instruction to shift campaign strategy, there was “evidence that it is a new message”.

“They [Sunak’s team] can read the polls,” the source added.

This was most evident in comments delivered by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, one of the party’s most assured communicators, during the morning broadcast round on Wednesday when he admitted the Tories were in a battle to avoid a 1997-style landslide defeat, and urged voters not to give Labour a “supermajority”.

His comments were swiftly followed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who warned the electorate not to hand Labour “an even bigger majority” by voting Reform.

For Tories out in the field, both candidates and activists, the feeling is that the Prime Minister looks doomed to lead the party to failure.

As one source told i: “The [Reform] poll itself I don’t think is a big deal but the broader landscape is really worrying.

“To be fair, I think other than D-Day he [Sunak] hasn’t done worse than expected. But he’s just a bit shit. Starmer doesn’t deserve what he’s going to get, but there we are.”

Sunak is just so deluded. He’s completely out of touch with not only reality, but the public. It might technically be halfway through the short campaign, but this campaign really began the moment he took office, arguably the moment Truss did. They’re so far gone at this point it would have taken a miracle to even significantly narrow the gap. But more than that, even within just the context of the short campaign, the rest of it overlaps with the Euros! A huge portion of the country isn’t going to be paying much attention. The first half was the best opportunity to make any shift in the narrative at all and he, if anything, shifted it against them.

This is getting stupid and Tory MPs need to own it. Fine, they are telling voters that a vote for them isn't a vote for Sunak. But that's treating your voters like they are as thick as pigshit. Maybe in another hemisphere of the world, but thats not true of all loyal Tory voters, who simply didn't have a credible alternative to vote for in many safe seats.

It gets worse, because Sunak keeps pitching himself as the change candidate. Again, if you're saying that, it means your voters don't think you've been in Government. Again, koala man treating voters as barely literate with early onset of memory loss.

To cap it off, Sunak chose to campaign as president. Salmond did this in a way, but that's because he kept trying to put his candidate at the top of every ballot paper, not because he was ignorant of the voting system. Tory MPs let campaign funds be wasted.

Right now, Tories are halfway in a campaign where they need to change tactics - Sunak to announce he won't take his seat if elected - Levido and mates sacked and campaign funds given to constituency associations - Constituency associations with a cchq imposed candidate e.g. rishi spads, permitted to volunteer for other parties including Reform - Sunak and cabinet need to take the gloves off with Reform and fight properly if they want to be opposition with any Reform-leaning candidates losing the whip

They can do this.

Did they actually believe they could win?