Tory hostility like Game of Thrones, Zahawi recalls

A former chancellor compared the hostility within the party to the mafia or Game of Thrones.

Nadhim Zahawi, who held the top job at the Treasury in the final days of Boris Johnson’s premiership, said colleagues had become so “nasty” in government that they formed a “circular killing squad” to take out their enemies.

In an interview with Times Radio, the former Conservative MP insisted his party must unite if it was to have any chance of recovery after its historic defeat at the last election.

He warned former colleagues that they are doomed to become “irrelevant” unless they stop “tearing each other to pieces”, suggesting that it had cost them dearly on July 4 and could now bring the party down altogether.

“The biggest threat to our party today is that we still want to destroy each other,” he said.

“People are not ready to unite. That breaks my heart. Until we are ready to unite and come together, we will be screaming into the void.

“This could be a moment in history where you could literally point to the timeline when the Conservative Party fell apart.”

Mr Zahawi, who voted for Britain to leave the EU, claimed the Tories “never reconciled” after the shock Brexit vote, instead splitting into increasingly “extreme” factions.

“We decided to form a circular firing squad when we were still in government,” he said.

“Elements in my party who were very unhappy with Boris blamed him for the referendum result and then chose a different path.

“The MPs were proud to be in the media and talk about the midnight meeting of the five families.”

The “five families”, a reference to the American mafia, was a term used to describe some of the most prominent Tory factions putting pressure on the leadership from the grassroots, including the European Research Group, a powerful Eurosceptic faction, and the Common Sense Group, which took a hard line in the culture war.

‘They became more extreme and venomous’

Mr Zahawi added: “We are not some kind of mafia. We got to the point where it felt more like Game of Thrones than a responsible governing party.

“The factions became increasingly extreme and violent towards each other.

“People looked at it and said, ‘No, enough. These people don’t deserve to have our vote.’

“If we don’t unite, if we don’t come together, then we will become irrelevant.”