Ben Kentish reflects on 'blue on blue infighting' between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss
26 July 2022, 19:50 | Updated: 10 October 2022, 14:11
Ben Kentish reflects on 'blue on blue infighting' between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss
This is the moment Ben Kentish said it seems as though the two remaining Tory leadership candidates cannot be in a room without "tearing chunks off each other".
He made the remark following the leadership debate which took place between the pair on Monday.
Ben said: "Now, if you thought the pleas from Tory grandees last week for Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to stop the blue on blue infighting were going to prove to fall on deaf ears, well you'd be absolutely spot on.
"Watching the debate last night between those two candidates, it was more heated, more unedifying I would say than any of the hustings and the events that has gone before.
"It seems that those two candidates cannot be in a room without tearing chunks off each other.
"And not just that, but trashing their own party's record in government.
"Liz Truss said that the economic policy that we've seen in recent years was leaving us on course for a recession.
"That's her assessment of the government's economic policy, the government that she served in.
"Now of course she's trying to pin the blame on Rishi Sunak, who until a couple of weeks ago was the Chancellor.
"But when you hear senior Tories - people who are vying to be the next Conservative leader and our next Prime Minister - talking in those terms about their own party's record in government, I wonder what you make of it.
"I wonder if this whole debate - this whole unedifying spectacle of prominent figures in the Conservative Party absolutely laying into each other - is going to come back to haunt the Tories at the next election, because if there's a cliche in Westminster that does often prove to ring true it's that divided parties don't win elections.
"Now both candidates have said that once this contest is over the party will have to come back together.
"But when you see some of the rhetoric that is being thrown around, it's very difficult to see how that's going to happen."
