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Rishi Sunak’s stuttering election campaign has been hit by a new round of big Conservative names quitting parliament, with housing secretary Michael Gove among those stepping down.
Gove’s departure, along with former cabinet ministers Dame Andrea Leadsom, Sir John Redwood and Greg Clark, means the number of Tory MPs who won’t be fighting their seats has overtaken the exodus that preceded Labour’s 1997 landslide.
On a difficult second day of campaigning for the UK prime minister, the running count of Conservatives declaring they will not stand again for Westminster reached 78, nearly a quarter of all serving Tory MPs.
Gove, a huge figure in Tory politics, announced on Friday evening that he would not be standing again in his Surrey Heath constituency, where he had a majority of over 18,000 at the 2019 election.
The Liberal Democrats were targeting Gove’s seat and are also hoping to win Clark’s seat of Tunbridge Wells and Redwood’s seat of Wokingham. The seats are all part of the so-called Tory “blue wall”.
Gove’s departure marks the end of a tumultuous political career, which saw him lead the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum and standing for the Tory leadership against Boris Johnson in the same year.
He was followed out of Westminster a few hours later by Leadsom, who also stood for the Tory leadership in 2016, losing out to Theresa May. Her majority in South Northamptonshire is 27,761.
In 1997, ahead of Sir Tony Blair achieving a 179-seat majority for Labour, 72 Tory MPs stood down.
The prime minister also faced internal criticism of his campaign launch, which involved surprising the party with his rainswept announcement of the July 4 poll date and holding the vote before showpiece policies on migration and a smoking ban had been enacted or legislated.
Sunak was told by a nursery owner at a campaign event in Staffordshire that government funding for early-years education could not cover costs. Jennifer Hughes said after her conversation with the prime minister she “would be inclined to vote Labour”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also had to contend with internal tensions, with his party announcing it would expel former leader Jeremy Corbyn minutes after the veteran socialist said he would run as an independent candidate in his London seat of Islington North.
In 2019, Corbyn led the party into its most catastrophic general election defeat in nearly a century with the loss of 60 MPs.
Starmer has largely marginalised Labour’s most leftwing MPs since he became leader in 2020, as part of his attempt to move the party to the centre ground of British politics.
As the Tories seek to claw back a 21-point poll deficit with Labour, Theresa May, a former prime minister and also one of the departing MPs, urged her party not to accept defeat.
“I spent 13 years in opposition — you do not want to do that,” May said, addressing Tory colleagues in her valedictory speech in the Commons. “Go out there and fight to make sure a Conservative government is re-elected.”
The party has yet to complete the selection process for around 150 seats, according to officials.
Conservative campaign headquarters emailed prospective candidates on Thursday seeking interest for around 100 seats with a 48-hour deadline. Another batch of seats would be advertised on Saturday with the party eager to complete the process quickly, the officials added.
In the wake of the Gove announcement, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said Conservative politicians were fleeing the blue wall in their droves.
“The drumbeat of Conservative MPs stepping down has been getting louder as the days go by — now it’s deafening.
Overall, 121 MPs from all parties have said they will not stand again.
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