Suella Braverman warns Tories will cease to exist if it fails to fight against Reform UK

Suella Braverman warned the Tories face an "existential threat” from Reform UK.

The former home secretary said her party lost the election because of Nigel Farage's insurgent party.

The Tory MP told GB News: “We have to make a decision about what kind of party we want to be.

"I believe in British politics there's space only for one Conservative Party and that's why we lost this election.

“Our vote went from about 13 million in 2019 to just under 7 million this week. We lost hundreds of brilliant Conservative MPs because of Reform.

“Millions of our voters were betrayed and angry with the Conservatives and they went to an alternative, Reform.

“I believe whoever's leading the party, whoever's in the party needs to acknowledge this basic truth, that we are facing an existential threat from Reform and we need to change ourselves to ensure that we neutralise that threat, that we bring those people back home.”

Mrs Braverman warned against doing "more of the same", saying: "We didn't deliver on our promises and we were not a conservative party.

"We said we wanted to lower immigration. We categorically did not do that. We said we wanted to lower taxation. We raised taxes. We said we were a party of common sense and yet children were mutilated in our schools and in our NHS on our watch."

She added: “We don't have any god-given entitlement to exist or to those voters. We need to be humble. We need to be humble in the face of the very strong feedback we've got from our own core voters, millions of people in this election.

"And if we don't stop and listen to what they're saying, which is very, very clear, okay, and very simple - you're going to fail."

Elsewhere during the interview, Mrs Braverman refused to say if she would run in the upcoming Tory leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak.

She also insisted she would not defect to Reform, which now has five MPs including Mr Farage.