“Flaky” and “neurotic” MPs elected as part of Boris Johnson’s landslide general election win in 2019 are to blame for his downfall, sources close to the prime minister say.
The race to replace Johnson as PM has heated up, with suggestions that Rishi Sunak is making ground on Liz Truss among Tory Party members.
According to the latest poll, there is now just a five-point gap between the two candidates, with Truss on 48 per cent compared with 43 per cent for the former chancellor, with 9 per cent of those questioned undecided.
The poll is in contrast to the last YouGov survey carried out at the end of the knockout stages which suggested that Truss had a 24-point lead over Sunak.
A campaign to include Boris Johnson on the final ballot continues to wage on, with the PM describing moves to remove him from power as the ‘greatest stitch-up since the Bayeux Tapestry’ in his wedding speech.
Friends of the Prime Minister say he thinks the intake of 2019 MPs are to blame for his demise.
They say the newly-elected politicians – which includes the Tories’ treasured Red Wall MPs – spent too much time on Twitter rather than forging party allegiances in Westminster.
The missed parliamentary time left the 2019ers “flaky”, “neurotic” and “lacking robustness” when it came to rallying round Mr Johnson this spring and summer, a friend told the i newspaper.
The Prime Minister made a veiled reference to this when he said at his final PMQs in July: “Above all, it is not Twitter that counts; it is the people that sent us here.”
