The crisis in the Conservative Party appears to be deepening after former Minister for London Paul Scully announced that he would be quitting at the next election.
Scully’s announcement makes him the 59th Tory MP to confirm that he does not want to seek re-election as the party continues to lag badly in the polls with some of the lowest ratings in its history.
The ex-minister was sacked in the last reshuffle in the middle of a Zoom meeting and had already been prevented from running for London Mayor in a process which some believe had been set up to deliberately block him.
It now means that the party will have to find a candidate for the South London seat of Sutton and Cheam which is a Lib Dem target.
With a majority of 8,351 at the last election it is under threat from a tsunami of seats to be lost by the Tories unless Sunak can turn his party’s fortunes around.
Mr Scully told Express.co.uk that he believes could have held on to the set had he stood.
He said: “I had some incumbency help and even though the majority was tight I think I could have got the votes.
“I just thought it was time to move on and do something else.”
Speaking to the Evening Standard he said: “At the moment we’ve lost focus as a party.
“The budget clearly is a moment to try and regain that focus, but if we don’t then there’s a real risk that we just repeat the mistakes of 1997 and start chasing an ideology rather than listening to what people actually want.
“I don’t want to retire as a politician but I’m not going to be part of the long term solution.
“So it’s better for me to go. It’s been a real privilege to be the MP for my home area but it’s just the right time to go before things outside that home area start to present themselves.”
The decision means that Sunak is faced with the biggest exodus of MPs in a single election and has been seen as a sign that confidence in a Tory victory has collapsed.
Despite this it is understood that party strategists still hope to try to hold the election in May.
