The Conservatives have been urged to "reinvent themselves" following some "serious soul searching", after their General Election wipeout.
Rishi Sunak's Tories suffered a huge blow from the British electorate after losing over 250 seats in Parliament, with Sir Keir Starmer becoming the country's new Prime Minister.
Reflecting on the loss, former Conservative MP Marcus Fysh warned of a now "split right wing" in British politics, amid the rise of the "unserious and unprofessional" Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage.
Fysh, who left the party after being unseated by Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance, told GB News he "wishes Labour well" and hopes the "national effort is a successful one".
Former Tory MP Marcus Fysh says the centre-right may 'never be elected again'
PA / GB News
Delivering his verdict on the loss of Conservative support across the UK, Fysh said: "The right of politics looks like it is going to remain split and the Labour government could be in power for a very long, long time.
"We need to be honest about where things stand and at the moment, in all the seats where ordinary working people had voted for Conservatives in the past, they either in large part stayed at home or they voted Reform."
Fysh added that until there is "any prospect of that changing" over the next five years, there is "absolutely no chance whatsoever of a centre-right party being elected in the UK again".
When asked by host Andrew Pierce if he believes the Conservatives need to "change their name and get a completely new identity", Fysh disagreed, but claimed the party needs some "serious soul searching".
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer won the General Election in a landslide victory for Labour
PA
Fysh told GB News: "The Tory party does need to have a quite serious soul searching about what it is there for.
"They can't pretend that nothing's really happened, thinking if they say some more centre-right things in opposition that people will believe that the Conservative Party is the thing to support in the future.
"They have seen that when in government those things are not as important to them."
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Fysh continued: "You have to question the core viability of it as an electoral force. And if you can't be confident that it has that chance of being the centre-right party that everybody gets behind again, then I think it is worth thinking now about whether there's a different way of doing things. And at the very least, a wholesale reconstruction of the brand."
Noting the success of right-wing party Reform UK, which won five seats in the election after receiving over four million votes, Andrew quizzed Fysh on whether he believes more people will flock to Nigel Farage in light of the Tory defeat.
Fysh responded: "Reform at the moment doesn't have the sort of serious professional organisation, and it's easy for people to have a pop at it saying that it's x, y, z.
Marcus Fysh said the Conservatives need to 'reinvent themselves' over the next five years
GB News
"It's focused on one person or a couple of people. It doesn't have that full, professional policy development platform and really deep thinking about how you implement change and what that means in terms of a political structure and organisation structure to be able to effectively deliver that.
"And deliver it in a way that is irreproachably of the centre-right and centre. That is the core issue that it has in going anywhere further - so that would have to happen before that could be considered."
Criticising the Conservatives further, Fysh concluded: "I don't think it's impossible that Reform could get there, but I think that the Tory party itself needs to reinvent itself.
"I think it needs to take a long, hard look at what it's done. And from what I've seen, many of the members are still a bit deluded about that."
