A prominent former Tory MP believes the Conservatives have “no chance” of winning the next General Election.

Michael Brown dismissed the party’s chances while discussing press reports about Boris Johnson saying that he plans to stay in Downing Street for at least a third term.

Mr Brown, who switched to the Brexit Part in 2019, said: “I’m afraid I think the die is cast.

“I’m not saying that the Labour Party are going to win the next election, but they will be able to form some kind of minority government in association with the Liberal Democrats and yes, the SNP, but I am saying that it is there is no chance in my view that the Conservative Party can win the election.”

He said the public have had enough: “I think they’re just fed up. They want a quiet life.

“They just want inflation dealt with but they have fallen out of love with Boris. There’s no way that you can gild the lily so far as the by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton are concerned.

“They are dramatic. And they’re not any old by-elections.”

He said, during an interview on Breakfast with Stephen and Anne on GB News, that the PM’s difficulties are due to MPs taking fright at losing their jobs in an election on the basis of the by-election results.

“It is a Tory MP, looking at his majority of 10, 20, 25,000 against a liberal Democrat, which is much of the south of England and saying to themselves, ‘I thought I had got a job for life’…I am going to be losing my seat.

“I think that they know that they are facing unemployment…

“Tory MPs aren’t thinking about becoming ministers, they’re thinking about what they’re going to do if they lose their seats in two years.”

Mr Brown said MPs will have taken soundings in their constituencies during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations and will be acting on that.

He said: “They simply got very, very gruesome feedback from their party workers who were saying to them, ‘it’s hell out there on the doorstep…we simply are not able to go out without getting abused on the doorstep.

“About Boris and the Tory Party, and inflation, and all the Partygate and everything.

“No, it’s self interest at the end of the day, a Member of Parliament is ruled not by whether they’re going to be promoted to Undersecretary state for paperclips.

“They’re motivated by the fact that, crikey, I’m not in a marginal seat but I can see myself going the way that Michael Brown did in 1997.”

He added: “They do have the interests of their constituents at heart. They are concerned about Partygate.

“They are concerned that their government is going against the election manifesto upon which they stood a couple of years ago. Where they pledged to reduce taxes it is increasing taxes.

“I mean, quite frankly, we’ve got a Labour government in all but name in terms of his economic policy, the highest tax burden since the Clement Atlee government 70 years ago.”