The herd of Conservative MPs is on the move again, this time obediently setting off towards the abattoir in which the careers of most will meet a grisly end. When historians come to write their accounts of the Conservative administrations of 2015-24, they will have a bewildering variety of ‘worst weeks’ to choose from, but the past seven days will have a strong claim to mark the moment when the fight went out of the parliamentary Conservative party and it became resigned to its fate.
Rishi Sunak achieved one thing of note this week
Two MRP polls with huge samples offering the possibility of constituency-level projections have offered a new range of likely outcomes. The first suggested just 98 Conservative MPs will be elected into the next parliament. That was so atrocious that when a second such poll predicted 155 Tory MPs, it actually felt like good news to some.
Of course, such an outcome would still be a worse result than either of the landslide defeats of 1997 and 2001. Yet with the number of Tory MPs standing down already having topped 60 – with plenty more yet to announce – and at least a hundred more assuming they are toast, whoever leads the party, a new mood of fatalism has set in. As one minister puts it: ‘There is a critical mass of people who have no incentives and the left of the party is too self-regarding to support a new leader from the right who might stand a chance of reconnecting with some of our lost voters.’
No doubt many MPs are also acutely conscious of just how chaotic and desperate yet another leadership change would look. Generations of school children have learned about the six wives of Henry VIII via the mnemonic ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’. Something similar suggests itself for the rapid turnover of prime ministers since David Cameron walked out on the job: imposed, removed, removed, imposed.
Ironically, the biggest event on the right of British politics this week was fizzing with energy and optimism. But that was the 60th birthday party of Nigel Farage, who dropped further hints that he is leaning towards a return to frontline politics that would surely spell big trouble for scores more sitting Conservatives.
Several, including Truss, David Davis and Andrea Jenkyns – one of only two Tory MPs to have publicly called on Sunak to go – were in the room for Farage’s speech. He said that he had not yet made his mind up and would set out his plans ‘over the next few weeks’. Yet it is now the working assumption of those closest to him that a full political comeback is going to happen.
The only thing of note Sunak achieved this week was the delivery of a veiled and empty threat about the possibility of the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. As sabre-rattling goes, it was more akin to wielding an over-ripe banana, David Miliband style, than a length of curved steel.
The local elections are looming and on the same day in early May there is the Blackpool South by-election. As one very senior figure on the right puts it: ‘Our basic problem is that the voters have contempt for us and even most of our own activists have gone on strike. Expectations are so low for the by-election that just fending off a Reform party challenge for second place would now be seen as worthwhile damage limitation. Who cares about the margin of defeat to Labour?
When asked directly by the Sun newspaper if he was planning a move back to California, the Prime Minister replied with a classic non-denial denial: ‘The UK is my home.’ That’s as maybe, but Downing Street isn’t going to be for much longer.
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