Ruling senior Conservative MP asks UK Premier Sunak to step down to avoid electoral 'massacre'

LONDON

A senior PM of the ruling Conservative Party has asked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to step down to avoid electoral "massacred" in the upcoming general elections.

Simon Clarke, who is also a former Cabinet minister, said the "unvarnished truth" is that Sunak is leading the party into the election, where "we will be massacred."

The MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, citing recent polls, warned that the party's seat count could fall as low as 169.

The Conservative Party has 349 seats in the House of Commons, followed by the Labour Party with 197 seats.

Britain is "on the brink of being run" by the Labour Party for a decade or more, he said, and Sunak's leadership, which he described as "uninspiring," is the "main obstacle" to the Conservative Party's recovery.

Sunak has "great strengths," and is "fiercely intelligent," but Clarke believes that these qualities "cannot compensate" for two fundamental problems.

The two problems, he explained, are that Sunak does not get what Britain needs and that the prime minister is "not listening" to what the Brits want.

The senior MP also criticized the prime minister's migration and economic policies, though he welcomed inflation's failure.

"We have a clear choice. Stick with Rishi Sunak, take the inevitable electoral consequences, and give the Left a blank cheque to change Britain as they see fit. Or we can change leader, and give our country and party a fighting chance," he wrote in the Telegraph’s late Tuesday edition.

His demand to replace the prime minister has been criticized by some Conservative MPs, including Former Home Secretary Priti Patel, who accused Clarke of "engaging in facile and divisive self indulgence."

"At this critical time for our country, with challenges at home and abroad, our party must focus on the people we serve and deliver for the country," she wrote on X.

For his part, David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, wrote: "The party and the country are sick and tired of MPs putting their own leadership ambitions ahead of the UK's best interests."