George Osborne has urged the Conservative Party not to go after Reform UK voters in its attempt to rebuild after the election defeat.
He warned that a move to the right would risk the party losing even more of their moderate supporters - something he said would work to Labour's advantage.
Speaking to the Political Currency podcast, the former Tory chancellor said: "It is a very hard tactical choice, for the new leader.
"Which is the obvious thing to do if you look at the maths is to say ‘let’s go and get the 14 or 15 per cent who voted Reform, add it to the 24 per cent who voted Conservative and we’re ahead of Labour, it is easy, job done’ without noticing really what I think is the central challenge which is the Conservative Party over a number of years vacated the central ground of British politics and allowed the Labour Party to move from the Corbynista position it was in to the centre ground.
George Osborne has urged the Conservative Party not to go after Reform UK voters in its attempt to rebuild after the election defeat
PA
"It allowed the Liberal Democrats to get the largest number of seats they have had in a century and decimate the Tories in places like the West Country.
"And if you don’t win back that centre ground, frankly you may get some of those Reform votes somehow… and you will lose more of your centre ground support in doing so and there is nothing that says the Labour Party is stuck on 34 per cent of the vote.
"There is no reason why they couldn’t go up higher and deprive you of the majority even if you managed to get some of those Reform people on side because they have expanded their position in the centre ground."
The Tory party suffered a wipeout at the election, returning just 119 MPs.
Labour won a landslide victory with 412 seats and 9.7 million votes.
Reform UK, which won just 5 MPs, took more than four million votes.
Speaking to GB News after the election, Reform leader Nigel Farage criticised the British voting system as "brutal", warning the Labour Party that the "argument for electoral reform is going to become very strong."
He said there is a "clear majority of the British public who now think the system doesn't work".
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He noted that for every one Reform UK MP there are "800,000 votes behind them", while for every Labour MP there are "fewer than 30,000".
Possible contenders to take over the leadership of the Tory Party include Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendaht, Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel.
