The opening shots of a Conservative civil war were fired on Friday as leading contenders to take over the party surveyed the post-election wreckage and the rebuilding job to come.
Two former leadership candidates who were strongly tipped to run again were brutally dismissed from the race before it even began, with both Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps losing their seats to a rampant Labour party.
Tory insiders appealed for the party to take its time over the looming post-mortem as Rishi Sunak conceded defeat, having gone to the country months sooner than expected in a bid to wrongfoot the Opposition and Reform UK.
In the event he wrongfooted his own party and did himself no favours with a gaffe-strewn campaign that started in the pouring rain, added grave offence to D-Day veterans and culminated in the revelation that Tory insiders close to the PM had bet on his election timing ahead of the announcement six weeks ago.
But beyond the optics of the calamitous campaign, a more profound inquest into policy and party philosophy was in sight with former home secretary Suella Braverman losing no time in urging a lurch to the right in response to Nigel Farage’s insurgency.
After winning back her Hampshire seat in Fareham and Waterlooville on a much-reduced majority, Ms Braverman echoed Mr Sunak’s apologies to the electorate.
“You, the great British people, voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises,” she said, adding: “I will do everything in my power to rebuild trust. We need to listen to you, you have spoken to us very clearly.”
Kemi Badenoch and Dame Priti Patel, two other leading lights of the Tory right, were both returned in their Essex constituencies.
Former PM Liz Truss suffered a stunning loss in Norfolk. She remained unrepentant about her time in office, adamant that more rather than less right-wing polices are in order.
But Mr Shapps, the first confirmed casualty from the Cabinet, said the long Tory “soap opera” had turned off voters.
“On door after door, voters have been dismayed by our inability to iron out our differences in private and do that and then be united in public,” he said.
He warned there was a danger the party could “go off on some tangent, condemning ourselves to years of lacklustre opposition”.
Ms Mordaunt echoed that the party had taken a “battering because it failed to honour the trust that people had placed in it”.
She too warned against a retreat to the Right: “Our renewal as a party and a country will not be achieved by us talking to an ever smaller slice of ourselves but being guided by the people of our country.”
“One Nation” survivors in the Conservatives’ Commons ranks are likely to coalesce around Chancellor Jeremy Hunt - who only just held off a strong Liberal Democrat challenge in his Surrey constituency of Godalming and Ash - and Health Secretary Victoria Atkins.
Fellow Cabinet centrist Tom Tugendhat acknowledged “a very, very difficult night for the Conservative Party” as he was returned in Tonbridge.
He added: “This has clearly been one of those moments where we really do need to stop and rethink where we’re going.”
