One of the authors of the 2019 Tory manifesto has warned that the party has little chance of winning the next election.
Former advisor Rachel Wolf said things look worrying for Liz Truss ’s Government after the disastrous mini-Budget and suggested they could be out of power by 2024.
Addressing a Conservative conference event entitled "Can the Tories win the next election?", she told gloomy Tories: "The answer is it's very unlikely."
Asked if the Government's could hold together the coalition of voters who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, she said: "The short answer is I don't think they can.
"I have a feeling that Thatcher... will be evoked a lot in the next few days. But it's worth remembering what the major differences were between Thatcher's 'the lady's not for turning' and Liz Truss's."
She said Margaret Thatcher was able to communicate economic policy through people's values and beliefs, and was fiscally conservative.
But she added: "The main difference to me is that she had a democratic mandate, she had a parliamentary mandate and this Government has neither."
Ms Wolf, a founder of consultancy firm Public First, argued that Ms Truss won the Tory leadership race in "significant part by not having betrayed Boris" but her Government has now junked everything he stood for.
Keir Starmer is the person who has learned most from the 2019 election, she said, arguing that he presented himself as "patriotic and not terrifying" at last week's Labour conference.
"That may well be enough," she said.
Pollster James Johnson, who worked for Theresa May in No10, also said it was difficult to see how the Tories win in 2024.
He said there was still a path for the Tories to win the next election until the turmoil from the mini-Budget but voters now see a link between the Tories and economic problems.
“When economic competence goes, the Conservatives lose their advantage”, he said.
Mr Johnson said it was "very hard to see how" the Tories could win the next election following the economic chaos of the last week, the views of swing voters and the loss of the economic advantage to Labour.
US Republican pollster Frank Luntz said the Tories need to stop banging on about ideology - saying it doesn’t work when people are suffering.
He criticised the Tory programme design and showed the audience a picture of Keir Starmer playing a ball game with school children as an example of how to appeal to voters.
