Conservative MP James Wild has responded to the Home Secretary’s speech in the Commons, saying ‘we want to see the police act without fear or favour’.

Speaking on GB News James Wild said:

“I think we want to see the police act without fear or favour when they’re policing any of these protests or disruption.

“We want to see politicians equally condemning lawlessness wherever the organisation that’s causing it is coming from. I think that’s the point that James Cleverly was trying to get across this afternoon.

“We need to condemn all violence and it all needs to be dealt with robustly. I think there are people, as we saw at the election, with concerns around immigration, whether that’s legal or illegal.

“And one of the reasons that the Conservative Party, my party, lost the last election was because we haven’t dealt with that issue, and that’s why we do need to do that to win back the trust of the people.

“I’m backing Tom Tugendhat. He is launching his campaign tomorrow morning.

“We’ve got a strong set of candidates who are vying to be the leader of the Conservative Party. I think Tom’s best place with the character, with his record of service to lead our party and to win back the trust.

“He’s someone who acts on his convictions. We’ve seen that over the National Insurance rise, which he voted against, as well as the pandemic when he voted against the covid passport. So I think he’s the best person.

“Tom’s been out to over 100 constituencies over the last few weeks. The other candidates have been out and to hustings. The membership has seen them. We’ve seen polls of what the members think.

“I’ve been talking to my association members who they think the best candidate is, as well. And we’ll now see tomorrow, we have the first hustings in Parliament for MPs, and then the first vote on Wednesday. Then we’ll see where the numbers are.

I think half the party, roughly, have declared where they are at the moment. A lot of colleagues are waiting to see how everyone performs tomorrow. So it’s a big day, an important day.

“We took the hammering at the election, and that’s because we lost the trust of people.

“When we have a leader, we’ll be able to start rebuilding that trust and take the fight to Keir Starmer.

“We’ve already seen whacking pensioners by taking away their winter fuel payments, letting people out of prison early. These aren’t things that were mentioned at the election.

“We haven’t even seen the big tax rises that are going to be coming in a matter of weeks.”