Grant Shapps says Conservatives had 'the world's worst manifesto' but refuses to blame Theresa May

Campaign pledges simply 'long list of punishments for public', says former Tory co-chairman

Former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Grant Shapps has said the Tories lost the election because they had the "world's worst manifesto", rather than because the electorate was tired of austerity.

Mr Shapps, who also served as housing minister under David Cameron's administration, used an interview with the BBC's Today programme to launch a scathing attack of the Conservative Party's manifesto.

But he avoided prompts from presenter John Humphrys to say whether Theresa May should resign following the general election campaign, which ended with the Tory party losing its majority.

Ms May struck a £1bn deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on Monday to prop up her weakened government following weeks of negotiations.

Mr Shapps said the costly agreement was "extraordinarily frustrating", adding: "We didn't need to be here".

"I think we had – obviously - an unnecessary election, and actually the world’s worst manifesto from the world’s oldest political party," Mr Shapps said.

He pointed to "crazy stuff" in the campaign document, such as holding a referendum on fox hunting, as the reason for the Conservatives losing seats.

Raising controversial issues such as social care, rather than garnering votes with appealing policies, was a mistake, Mr Shapps added.

Yet he denied the theory that voters had rejected the Conservative Party because of deep cuts to the public sector.

It "wasn’t down to people suddenly changing their mind about austerity, which none of us have ever liked," Mr Shapps said. "It was because we forgot the lessons from previous campaigns and in particular launched a manifesto which was just appalling."

Mr Shapps, who attracted controversy in 2015 when it emerged he held a second job as a "multimillion-dollar web marketer” under the pseudonym Michael Green for at least year after he first became an MP, did not call for Ms May's resignation during the interview.

Instead, he simply said the party must learn "lessons" from their disappointing election performance.

“We didn’t have a single person in charge of the campaign," Mr Shapps said, "we forgot to build a team of activists ... and we had a manifesto that not only wasn’t collaborative in its creation, but also didn’t have popular and appealing policies.

"Instead it had a long list of punishments for the public… and that of course is a massive mistake.

“We lost it [the election] because we had a programme that simply didn’t stack-up and was unpopular. If we fail to learn the right lesson from this election, then we will find that we never win elections again.”