A prominent Suffolk Conservative - who oversaw the selection of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Dr Dan Poulter - has left the party in protest at what he sees as the "abandonment of its core values".
Stephen Britt, former chair of the Central Suffolk and North Ipswich Conservative Association, is also urging Suffolk voters to spoil their ballots at the next election by writing '#NoneoftheAbove' to register their discontent with the political establishment.
His rationale was that all the political parties shared a belief in "increasing the reach of the state into more and more areas of everyday life".
READ MORE: Stephen Britt of Anchor Storage shares his favourite Suffolk things
He said: “At the most basic level, nothing works properly anymore.
"The Westminster and Whitehall elites are so utterly out of touch with the vast majority of the British people, on everything from taxation, the over-reach within the green agenda, immigration and crime and punishment.
“The two major parties are now virtually identical to each other, with a shared emphasis on increasing the reach of the state into more and more areas of everyday life."
The libertarian pro-business campaigner, who has run a logistics firm near Debenham for nearly 40 years, was a supporter of previous Tory prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but had given current PM Rishi Sunak "the benefit of the doubt".
He also accused the government of failing to invest in infrastructure upgrades in Suffolk.
Mr Britt said: “The one legitimate spending role of the state is to create the conditions which promote economic growth.
"Yet the obvious need for the county to have road, rail and telecoms systems fit for the 21st century has fallen on deaf ears, with our Conservative MPs unable or unwilling to push harder for Suffolk to have its fair share of such investments."
He said he was not planning to join another party before the next general election, but was instead backing the #NoneoftheAbove campaign.
He added: “Your protest will be included in the turnout figures and in the numbers of spoilt papers not allocated to any candidate.
“Without this act of electoral disobedience, nothing in this great country will ever work properly again and our freedoms will be eroded even further."
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