The former Conservative chairman, Baroness Warsi, says her party will not win the next election unless it does more to attract ethnic minority voters.
She resigned as a government minister over the UK's policy on Gaza last week but has now broadened her criticisms.
Lady Warsi told the Sunday Times and Independent on Sunday the Tories had left it "a little late" to woo ethnic minorities for the next election.
Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi said it was sad Lady Warsi felt the way she did.
Lady Warsi became the first female Muslim cabinet minister when David Cameron took office in 2010.
'Shifting' leadershipIn her newspaper interviews she also criticised "bitchy" male colleagues and repeated her anger at the government's handling of the fighting in Gaza.
She said: "I will be out there, vocally fighting for an outright Conservative majority.
"But the electoral reality is that we will not win outright Conservative majorities until we start attracting more of the ethnic vote."
End Quote Baroness WarsiSome of the bitchiest women I've ever met in my life are the men in politics"
Lady Warsi said she was one of David Cameron's earliest supporters in 2005, thinking: "This is a guy who gets today's Britain. He's a new kind of Conservative. He's comfortable with today's Britain".
But she added: "I think the party has shifted since then. The party leadership has shifted since then. I think over time it will be a regressive move because we have to appeal to all of Britain, not just because it's morally the right thing to do... but because it is an electoral reality.
"We've probably left it a little too late to take this part of the electorate seriously."
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says the Conservatives won a 36% share of the vote at the last election, but gained the support of just 16% of ethnic minority voters.
The Number 10 policy unit had been looking at ways to narrow this gap, and changes to stop-and-search laws were partly motivated by the concerns of ethnic minority voters, he added.
Israeli relationshipRejecting criticisms that she was not up to her job, Lady Warsi said she was a "brown, working-class woman from the North. People have been telling me I'm not good enough since the day I was born".
She also said that "some of the bitchiest women I've ever met in my life are the men in politics".
And she called on the government to "recognise Palestine as a state" and impose an arms embargo on Israel.
She also criticised Chancellor George Osborne and chief whip Michael Gove for not using their "very, very close" relations with the Israeli government to help end the hostilities.
"What is the point of having that strong relationship if you can't use it to move them to a position which is in their interests and our interests?"
She also rejected Mr Osborne's claim that her resignation had been "unnecessary".
She said: "My actions would not have been necessary if he had done what he should have done, which is pick up the phone to people he is incredibly close to and say: 'It's unnecessary for you to meet your ends by taking out power stations, taking out homes, taking out schools and killing kids on beaches'."'
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