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The Tories were unprepared for a snap election in June, Theresa May - who called a snap election in April - said today.

The Prime Minister admitted that a "significant factor" in the party's disastrous election result, which saw her lose her parliamentary majority, was not having time to put together a 'less centralised' grassroots campaign.

And she said the party would "think carefully" about using social media to create "negative atmospheres" in future campaigns.

She also bemoaned the lack of people "coming together for debates" during the campaign, after repeatedly refusing to take part in head-to-head debates herself.

Asked if she thought it being a snap election had been a "significant factor" in the party's poll drubbing, she said: "I think it was, because by definition in a snap election you’ve not been able to prepare people for it. So out there people have to work quite quickly to put their local campaigns together, and you do get slightly more of a central approach."

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

She made the admission in a frank interview with former Tory leader Michael Howard in Parliament's The House magazine.

Mrs May complained that some Tory candidates had had "some really quite difficult campaigns because of what was said across social media."

And she gave the impression that she and the party had not really grasped social media in general.

She welcomed the "faster and more comprehensive" interaction she could have with people in a Facebook Live interview.

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But she admitted the party had struggled with social media strategy.

She said: "I think that, perhaps as a party or as a government, we’ve seen social media as a means of trying to disseminate a message. But others are using it in a much more varied way. They’re using it to create an atmosphere around what is being said, around interviews, around events, which leads people to question them."

She suggested the party could use this to their advantage: "The ways in which social media can be used not just to disseminate a message but to create those negative atmospheres – and of course positive atmospheres in relation to members of a party, in the cases you’re quoting in the Labour party – is something we need to think very carefully about."

And Mrs May harked back to the good old days, when "there much more of an emphasis on people coming together for debates during election campaigns."

During the election campaign, Mrs May refused repeatedly to take part in a head-to-head TV debate with Jeremy Corbyn and other politicians, sending Home Secretary Amber Rudd in her place.