Rishi Sunak has been urged by a former Conservative Party member to have the "decency" to call a general election. Nurse Marc Evans, 33, has voted for the Conservatives in consecutive elections since he left university but renounced his political party of more than a decade in the midst of Boris Johnson’s partygate scandal in May.
A Tory member for five years, Mr Evans has now switched sides and joined Labour. And he believes it is time the Conservatives relinquished power after creating "turmoil" in the country.
“They are an utter disgrace,” Mr Evans, who lives in Bristol, told the PA news agency. “It seems like they’re in a sinking ship and they’re trying to plug holes.
“Rishi Sunak is now the successor of the successor of Boris, who won the election in 2019. I don’t think he’s got the mandate to govern, I think there should be a general election now.
“I think he needs to have the decency and respect for the British people. We’ve had 12 years of Conservative rule (and) the country is in turmoil."
Mr Evans said he considers himself “a traditional conservative” but believes the Tories are now “representing their own interests or the interests of the ultra-wealthy” rather than the British public. “They’re not listening to the British people and they’re not trying to understand where people are coming from and the struggles that people are going through," he said.
“As a nurse… I’ve just been paid for this month, my mortgage has just come out and my other bills have just come out and I’m just about to go back into my overdraft. I’ve used food banks, I feel I’ve got no support at the moment and I just feel completely let down and trapped by the system at the moment as well.
“My wage is decent compared to some in this country but I still feel that I’m really struggling and there will be a lot of people out there a lot worse off than myself.”
Mr Evans said Sir Keir Starmer’s speech at the Labour Party conference in September “stood out” to him as “being a new direction that we need to take”. “The message from Labour at the moment is clear, it feels consistent, it feels calm,” he said.
“Giving Keir Starmer a chance and actually listening to what he had to say at the Labour Party conference, I think that really stood out to me as being a new direction that we need to take, that we need to make these fundamental changes. Whereas the message coming from the Conservative Party does seem rash and unorganised, and dishevelled.”
