THE Tories will be punished by voters if the party drops its long-standing commitment to reduce the number of migrants coming to the UK, former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe has suggested.

After the Prime Minster failed to commit to reducing immigration to 2019 manifesto pledge levels, she told GB News: “There has been no negation on that since in principle, but there has been in practice.

“But in principle, nobody has said, ‘oh, well, you know, this is history, we’ve abandoned that, it’s inoperative.’ Nobody has said that.

“The nation is fully entitled to believe that that promise is still operative and they’re failing totally.”

In a discussion with Dan Wootton, she said: “If they do fail on immigration, then they will almost certainly lose the general election.

“And then indeed, there will be unavoidably be a leadership contest. However, we’re not just considering the Tory party here. We’re considering the country.

“The country did look extremely foolish when we had a rapid succession of Prime Ministers. I think we all remember the picture and the German press of a banana and they said that was Britain.

“We do not need to go through that sort of upheaval between now and the general election, so I think that it would be a responsible to wait before speculating on who’s going to succeed.”

She added: “What I think we have to do about this is to say, ‘well, if I was the Home Secretary, what would I be doing?

“The first thing she’s got to do is decide, I’m laying aside illegal immigration, I’m looking at the legal immigration, which categories they want to bring down. Do they want fewer students, fewer student dependents, fewer skilled workers, which categories do they want to bring down?

“There appears to be no method to this. This is general and all-consuming promise, oh, well, we’ll bring immigration down’ with no addressing at all of what immigration it is that they want to bring down, they don’t tell us that.”