Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that Reform wouldn’t have been such a threat to the Tories if the party had stuck to Conservative principles and blamed a few ‘small minded, rather selfish’ MPs for removing Boris Johnson.
The former business secretary also said he believed Labour would align the country as close as possible with EU rules without rejoining.
Speaking to GB News, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “It's not necessarily about the individual, it’s about the policies.
“Nigel [Farage] wouldn't have needed the vehicle of Reform if the Tories got on with Brexit properly, if we hadn't raised taxes to their highest level in 70 years and we’d dealt with immigration.
“If we can do that, and we can convince people that we're serious about that, then the Tory family comes back together, naturally.
“I think there's this idea that you just sort of try and kidnap Nigel, bring him to the Tory party, then all the problems are solved. But they're not, because unless you change the underlying policies and get the message that we're on the side of the voters, it won't change.
“There will be another Nigel who will emerge if we can't get that right, and we need to be concerned about what makes people's lives better. What are our voters concerned about? And I'm afraid we got very out of touch in the last Parliament.
“The members must maintain their vote, it would be terrible to take it away from them.
“It's the MPs who bungled, the MPs who got rid of Boris. It wasn't the members.
“The members gave us Boris as the most charismatic leader the Tory party has had since Margaret Thatcher. He won a majority of 80 and then a few small minded, rather selfish MPs cabaled together to get rid of him, and that can't be blamed on the members.
“I don’t see a route for [Boris Johnson to return as leader] but if you're talking about who should decide, always trust the people.
“I think the British people will not vote to go back into the European Union. The Labour Party knows that, and they're not going to try and rejoin.
“What they're going to try and do is mimic and copy and ape. But the great thing is that we maintain parliamentary sovereignty, so that at some point we can have a government that deals with Brexit properly and comprehensively. And that's what we must keep on pushing towards.
“But Labour will take us as close as possible.”
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