Richard Tice reflects on Reform's by-election results
Furious Conservative members and voters have "inundated" a campaign to "Bring Back Boris" with messages of support in the wake of the by-election humiliations last night.
As the dust began to settle on the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections where two safe Tory seats became the latest to be won off them by Labour, Conservative supporters wanting to oust Rishi Sunak started to send messages to a mothballed campaign to bring back Boris Johnson.
The Conservative Post campaign was launched in the summer of 2022 to give Tory members the chance to vote on whether Boris Johnson's resignation as party leader should be accepted.
But it appears that hundreds of Conservative supporters rediscovered the campaign by Googling "Bring Back Boris" as fury rose with Rishi Sunak and the party leadership over the by-elections and distance behind Labour in the polls.
Conservative Post editor Claire Bullivant shared the messages she has received which now stand at more than 36,000 since she first launched the campaign.
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READ MORE: Richard Tice calls on Rishi Sunak to step down and let him take on Keir Starmer
Rishi Sunak has faced criticism after the by-election defeats (Image: Getty)
One person wrote: "Please re-instate Boris. Tory had no right to change what the British public voted for. Our democracy is a scandal. Rishi Sunak is a waste of space. Fed up with the tax hikes engineered by him [Sunak] and [Chancellor] Jeremy Hunt."
Another said: "This is ridiculous, Boris is the best leader since Maggy and Winston, I'm a farmer in Suffolk and I'm sick to death of this pussy footing around of lame leadership as we are seeing with personal fund gaming fishy Rishi, I've had enough, change your leadership or I'll change my vote."
There was anger at the way the Privileges Committee conducted its inquiry and gave Johnson a 90-day suspension which forced him to quit Parliament.
Another said: "I refuse to vote Conservative while Rishi is leader because of what he did to Boris - not only ousting him but, aided by his supporters and Harriet Harman, expelling him from Parliament and grinding him into the dirt to prevent him making a comeback. I think Rishi is a vile, malicious plotter. However if Boris did come back in any form I would vote to support him, and hope it would show the party what a dreadful mistake they made."
Another added: "He should never have been forced out...I was angry about it at the time and am still angry now. He was a fantastic Prime Minister, who actually cared about our country, 'talked the country up', saw the positives, spoke with passion, a real inspiration! His job was made so much more difficult by the Pandemic, which I believe he handled well, and Brexit, which all these years on certain groups still won't accept. We need Boris back to have any chance whatsoever of keeping a Conservative government after the next general election."
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Labour's Gen Kitchen celebrates after winning in Wellingborough (Image: Getty)
There were warnings about the electoral consequences of sticking with Sunak, as most MPs appear to want to do.
One said: "Bring back Boris Johnson or see Starmer become PM. That would be a disaster if Labour were to ever win a general election again and Suella Braverman as Foreign or Defence Secretary."
Another said: "I have always voted Conservative and was utterly dismayed by the way Boris was displaced by his party. It was a 'witch hunt' from start to finish, resulting in the forced dismissal of the only person capable of saving the party. He stands out as a great politician, and leader and we desperately need him back to lead us to victory. Without him as leader? We will not win the next general election."
A third added: "I was a member until the bastards struck the knife in, I take the old fashioned view that it was for the voters to decide."
These are a handful of hundreds of messages received in the last 24 hours on the campaign website.
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Ms Bullivant told Express.co.uk that she was surprised to see the alerts for literally hundreds of messages.
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She said: "I'm being inundated with signatures on the Bring Back Boris petition I launched on the Conservative Post.
"People must be Googling and finding it as I haven't put it anywhere since Boris stepped down.
"But woke up to a flood of signatures and messages this morning."
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