Matt Hancock tells Tories to 'deliver from the centre ground' after Brexit
2 min read
Matt Hancock says that the Conservatives need to "deliver from the centre ground" after Brexit, in comments likely to be seen as a bid for the party leadership.
In an interview with The Times, the Health Secretary said "the clear evidence" from Thursday's local elections "is that both main parties are getting the message that they need to deliver Brexit but also that voters don’t want extremes, they want the centre."
He added that while it was "deeply frustrating" Brexit had not yet been delivered, "I’m really frustrated about wanting to get on to everything else and start talking about what affects people in their day-to-day lives. Politics is stuck and we need to get it moving again.”
Mr Hancock warned that becoming the Brexit party would mean the Conservatives "are finished".
"Moving to the right in response to Jeremy Corbyn moving to the hard left is exactly the wrong answer," he said. "There is a yearning for a political movement to not just occupy the centre ground but dominate it and unite the country. Politics at the moment is a fight between populism, dividing groups and setting them against each other, and unifying politics which tries to bring people together. I am unambiguously in that latter tradition.”
He urged people to join the Tories, arguing that "having lost one major political party — Labour — to the extremes, it’s vital that the Conservative Party helps to bring people together to the centre."
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