David Cameron has dismissed Labour’s inquest into its election defeat as not even remotely serious but has warned his party that it cannot rest on its laurels or assume that Labour will be out of power for a decade.
Speaking to journalists on his way to Indonesia, Cameron said: “The Labour party leadership election does not seem to be a remotely serious exercise in trying to understand what has changed in Britain and why they need to change. What we have seen in the past few weeks does not seem to me to be a remotely serious exercise.
“When I think back to 2005 when I was elected Conservative leader, me and my team had done some serious thinking about what we needed to change and how to get the Conservative party back into contention.”
But the prime minister warned: “Every election is a massive challenge and you have to win over the British people all over again every five years, and no one should rest on their laurels. The Conservative party won’t and I won’t.”
Although Cameron agreed that the leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn was doing “quite well” in the leadership election, he said it was not about one candidate or another.
The Conservative leadership are pinching themselves at the prospect of a victory by Corbyn and believe even if he is not elected in September the contest has inflicted serious reputational damage by revealing how far to the left much of Labour has become.
Conservative officials intend to use quotes from the contest, as well as the splits over welfare, to take home the message that whoever is elected leader will be weak and unable to change a party that is fundamentally out of touch with mainstream thinking in England. They point to polls showing Tony Blair as the most preferred Labour party leader among the public, yet the three-time election winner is reviled inside his own party.
Cameron also told his party: “We have got to be a really strong government that delivers on its promises and does all the things we said in our manifesto and we are making good progress on that.
“What matters for my party is to deliver on what we said if we do things the one-nation approach delivering that landmark budget for working people. If we deliver on the things we set out in our manifesto, the biggest question at the next election will be have we performed, not what Labour do.”
