Suella Braverman claims she has warned Rishi Sunak over his failure to get a grip on illegal immigration – but says she was “blocked”.
And the woman frequently touted as a possible successor to the Prime Minister also admitted to being “depressed” by Thursday's YouGov poll suggesting the Tories are now one point behind Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Ms Braverman lamented what she called “this split on the Right”.
She continued: “If we're a proper Conservative Party that just does what we promised to do, like cut migration and cut taxes, we wouldn't have this division… and we'd have another 15 percent added on to our polling right. now.
“I do think that had we done better on immigration, I don't think we'd be dealing with this problem right now. I urged the Prime Minister for years to take some action on illegal immigration… I was blocked.”
With specific reference to Mr Sunak's Rwanda deportation scheme, Ms Braverman predicted it would be dogged by problems for as long as Britain was effectively straitjacketed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
She explained: “They might get a token flight.
“You have to block off all the individual challenges before they happen in primary legislation.”
The poll, which put the Tories on 18 points and Reform on 19, was both “predictable” and “depressing”, Ms Braverman said.
She added: “This is Rishi's campaign. I've been wrong on some things. Hopefully, I'll be wrong about this too.”
Ms Braverman, who denied she was planning to jump ship for Reform, also said she believed Mr Farage would vote Tory if her party cut migration and taxes.
Speaking in May after the Tories' local election hammering, Ms Braverman warned the PM if he “didn't change course” the Conservative Party would be “lucky to have any MPs left” after the next general election.
And in a brutal analysis, the woman tipped by many as Mr Sunak's successor also said she regretted backing him as party leader – while emphasizing that it was not “feasible” to switch.
She emphasized: “At this rate, we'll be lucky to have any Conservative MPs at the next election, and we need to fight.”
Asked why she had changed her mind, Ms Braverman said: “I had assurances from Rishi Sunak that he was going to put a cap on legal migration, that he was going to do something about the European Convention on Human Rights, that he was going to fix this transgender ideology in our schools. He hasn't done that.”
Tory voters were currently “on strike” in protest at Mr Sunak's policies, she claimed.