Our naturally centrist and establishment-minded Conservative prime minister trails Labour badly in the polls even though the electorate is at best lukewarm about the leader of the opposition.
Former Tory voters are drifting away, outraged about a perceived abandonment of sound Conservative principles and European interference in the immigration system. Economic austerity may have convinced financial markets that the PM is serious about rebuilding the battered public finances, but the tax rises and spending restraint involved are making popularity a stranger to him.
With the Commons in Christmas recess, a threat is growing on the Conservative right flank which will make the next election impossible to win unless it is dealt with decisively.
This is the political landscape facing Rishi Sunak as the year draws to a close. It is also a description of the political landscape that David Cameron faced exactly ten years ago.
The indispensable polling database kept by the former Lib Dem strategist Mark Pack reminds us that the final two opinion polls of 2012 both gave Labour a ten-point lead, by 43 to 33 with YouGov and 39 to 29 with Opinium.
In this respect, Sunak is in a deeper hole than was Cameron because the average Labour lead right now is more than 20 points.
But Cameron certainly had it worse when it came to the threat from the Right. Because UKIP was not only typically polling in high single figures but had also turned into a potent force in real elections under the compelling leadership of Nigel Farage. In November 2012, for instance, UKIP chalked up 5,108 votes and a 14 per cent vote share in the Corby by-election, ensuring that the key marginal seat was lost by the Tories and won by Labour. Compare that to the 2.7 per cent vote share and 773 votes won by the Reform party in the Chester by-election at the start of this month.
Despite Reform scoring an opinion poll average of seven per cent at the moment, at least a big a danger for Sunak is erstwhile Tories simply not bothering to vote at all at the next general election.
As everyone will recall, Cameron did indeed perform a Houdini act and ended up winning an outright majority at the 2015 election. The centrepiece of his escapology was a promise to hold an In/Out referendum on EU membership that he announced in January 2013. So, can Sunak pull off the same trick via a big New Year policy play (preferably for him without it then rebounding in his face and terminating his tenure in Downing Street)?
We already know the policy area he has identified as his equivalent to Cameron’s EU angst: It is the largescale illegal immigration that is taking place across the English Channel. This is a touchstone issue for Conservative-inclined voters and has been identified as the biggest single reason for them ceasing to support the party. As Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, the chairman of the Blue Collar group of Tory MPs, puts it: ‘The migrant crisis is the single biggest issue entering my inbox. We have lost control of our borders. The clock is ticking and if we don’t sort this out soon our chances at the next election look pretty slim.’
With the policy of transferring irregular migrants to Rwanda having been torpedoed by the European Court of Human Rights last summer, Sunak announced before the Christmas recess a package of measures designed to halt the remorseless increase in cross-Channel dinghies. Most of its contents were things that will at best help a bit at the margins.
But the key ingredient was a new principle, to be enshrined in legislation, that nobody arriving in the UK illegally should get to stay here. Sunak told MPs he was determined to solve a ‘fundamental question once and for all’.
‘I’m prepared to do what must be done. Early next year there will be new legislation: if you enter the UK illegally you should not be able to remain here,’ he said.
Instead, illegal arrivals would be detained and then returned to their home country or to a safe third country to have their status considered. And once removed, asylum applicants would have no right to re-entry, settlement or citizenship in Britain.
Of course, no referendum will be involved in Sunak’s big policy. And the PM affects to believe that he can implement his new laws while simultaneously keeping Britain attached to the European Convention on Human Rights and the French-based court which supervises its application.
Does Sunak really want to break free of the post Second World War international agreements that have led to the wholesale abuse of the asylum process?
But there is at least an even chance this will not turn out to be possible and that he will therefore have to choose between abandoning his pledge or including in the next Conservative manifesto an undertaking to withdraw from the ECHR.
For those of us who believe in the right – and indeed the duty – of a nation state to implement sound border controls this crunch point can hardly come fast enough.
Does Sunak really want to break free of the post Second World War international agreements that have led to the wholesale abuse of the asylum process? No more than Cameron really wanted to set Britain on a path to leaving the EU.
But having noticed that these days Tory leaders don’t seem to believe in very much other than occupying high office, those of us who do have become adept at bending them to our will: Every move is checkmate apart from the one we want him to make.
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