Theresa May has turned Jeremy Corbyn into ‘nation’s favourite grandfather’, says former Tory chairman
2 min read
Theresa May helped turn Jeremy Corbyn into the "nation’s favourite grandfather" thanks to the Conservatives' terrible election campaign, Lord Patten has said.
The former Tory chairman who served in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet - also slammed the Government as "weak" for having to given "bungs" to the Democratic Unionist Party to stay in power.
He also said the Government could not continue "living from hand to mouth in this sort of shambolic way" under Mrs May's premiership.
“I think it’s very difficult for (Theresa May) because she went in to the election with a huge majority over Labour and she came out having, thanks to a dire Conservative campaign, turned Jeremy Corbyn into the nation’s favourite grandfather, which is nonsense, but that’s what’s happened,” he told BBC Radio 5Live.
He added: “I do think he fought a very good campaign. But that was partly because the Conservative Party fought such a woeful campaign.”
Lord Patten, who was also a European Commissioner for the UK, also suggested the Government was in disarray, with no senior figures asserting how they want to move forward.
He said: “Nobody seems to have much of a grip. There was a very famous old Conservative knight of the shires who once said in a similar situation, although I can’t quite think of anything as bad as this, he said ‘pro bono publico, no bloody panico!’, and there is a sense that you have at a moment of everybody doing their own thing, nobody actually asserting what they want to do in the national interest.
“We can’t go on living from hand to mouth in this sort of shambolic way, so it’s for the Prime Minister, that’s what she’s there for, with senior ministers to stop all the argument and to tell us how they’re going to proceed for example with Brexit, how they’re going to proceed with the economy, and others who’ve got their own opinion to shut up.”
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