Minister Greg Hands says there won't be a May general election

Transcript

00:00 Are you ready for a May election if it comes? Do you think there's any sniff of actually there

00:02 being a general election in May? No. That's very clear. Yesterday's polling, I'm sure you saw it,

00:08 had your party on its lowest support for more than 40 years. Your colleague Paul Scully stepped down

00:14 yesterday warning against the risk of losing the centre. He also said, Greg Hands, that the party

00:19 are at risk of, and forgive the term but he said it not me, the party are at risk of becoming

00:24 bellends. What do you say to that? Well, I mean, I don't agree with that. Paul would obviously

00:30 have his views and everybody's entitled to have their view. But I see a Conservative Party united,

00:36 a government united on delivering against the people's priorities. It's not been an easy time

00:42 with the pandemic, with Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the rise in energy prices,

00:48 the rise in inflation that caused. But we are turning the corner. That's what the Bank of

00:52 England said. You're not turning the corner in the polls though, are you? That's very striking.

00:57 You must wake up every morning, Greg Hands, and think we have got no chance, no chance. These

01:02 polls are awful. Well, I disagree with that. And obviously the poll that matters will be the general

01:08 election. You don't think these are good polls, do you? I mean, you're the lowest support in 50

01:10 years. Well, of course, I'd like us to be doing much better than that. But the poll that matters,

01:16 well, there's two polls that matter. There's the one on the 2nd of May, particularly here in London

01:21 to get rid of Mayor Sadiq Khan. And then there's the poll, the general election. Which is not going

01:24 to happen. You're 25% behind, your Tory candidate is 25% behind against Sadiq Khan. I mean, this is,

01:32 I mean, to argue that the Tories are going to win the mayorship in London is laughable, Greg.

01:37 Well, I disagree with that. No, I disagree with that. I think what you'll find is that Sadiq Khan

01:42 is an extremely unpopular politician. And that opens up... What does that say about your candidate

01:47 then? Because he's 25% ahead of him. Well, I think you'll have to see what happens on the 2nd of May.

01:53 But what I'm saying is that does open up the possibility of a conservative win in the London

01:59 mayoralty. And that would build us up quite nicely for the general election later this year.