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Hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with, rather than an interrogation

of, somebody shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs.

I have some questions for you today. What is the future of the Conservative Party? What is it for?

Questions that have to be answered long before the Tories choose a new leader?

Why? Well, because there are real questions about whether the Conservatives can survive the greatest electoral crisis the party has ever faced,

or does it risk being replaced by a new right-wing challenger as happened in France or taken over by one as happened in the

United States.

My guess this week intriguingly thinks the party does need to feel real pain. He thinks it's got to face up to

uncomfortable truths about why voters deserted them. The former immigration minister Robert Genrich, a one-time ally of Rishi Sunak,

who quit his government because he thought it wasn't tough enough on immigration, is one of the

first out of the traps traps keen to tell his party what it must now do to have

any real future at all.

Robert Genre, welcome to political thinking.

Pleased to be here, Nick. 10 o'clock Thursday the 4th of July the exit poll comes out. Where were you and do you

remember what you felt?

I was in my bedroom in Newark.

I left my wife and family downstairs in the kitchen

watching the exit pole on that TV

because I was so nervous. I wanted to see it on my own

every single one of the MRP polls that had be deviled the election campaign

said we were going to lose in Newark and so it took a bit of a leap of

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