Sunak on Borrowed Time?

It’s easier than you might think to topple a Conservative Prime Minister. All it required in the case of Boris Johnson, was an illicit ménage à trois with Mr Chandon and Mr Kipling; for Liz Truss, it was aggressive tax cuts that spooked the markets. Now it appears Rishi Sunak could be about to fall unwillingly on his sword, thereby making it a hattrick of Tory Prime Ministers in the space of 14 months. And in Rishi’s case, a dismissal is genuinely warranted.

Having reneged on his previous five-point plan, the PM seems to have concluded that it’s easier to come up with a fresh one and hope the voters won’t notice. Under his stewardship, the Tories are 20-points adrift in the polls, and Sunak himself is now polling worse than Liz Truss. I confess, I mistakenly believed Braverman’s resignation would trigger a leadership bid – but the coup failed to materialise. One obvious point in Sunak’s favour, is that moving against him this close to a general election would be tantamount to electoral suicide; a point his enemies know all too well.

However, even that may no longer be able to save him; a tipping point has unquestionably been reached. Having staked everything on controlling immigration (classifying the latest Rwanda bill as “do or die”), Sunak has just lost his immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, who resigned yesterday in protest at the watered-down legislation. With the party torn between the One Nation Tories who view the European Court of Human Rights as a ‘red line’, and the New Conservative / European Research Group right who want the ECHR overridden entirely, Sunak tried and failed to woo them both. In the words of Jenrick, the legislation in its current form simply “does not go far enough”.

Jenrick’s resignation letter is worth reading in full, and while the tone is more sympathetic than Braverman’s, it still retains plenty of bite. Below are the main points:

I cannot continue in my position when I have such strong disagreements with the direction of the government’s policy on immigration…

The government has a responsibility to place our vital national interests above highly contested interpretations of international law…

In our discussions on the proposed emergency legislation, you have moved towards my position, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success…

A bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience. The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent…

I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promises on immigration to the British public but does not keep them. We said that we would stop the boats altogether. That is what the public rightly demands and expects of us. We must truly mean that we will do ‘whatever it takes’ to deliver this commitment when we say so.

Jenrick’s resignation is the stuff of nightmare for Sunak. The immigration minister had threatened to resign if the bill was not sufficiently resolute, and in a rare move he kept his word. Moreover, Jenrick is no mere minister, but a close ally and friend of the PM. If the man charged with driving the last-ditch deal through parliament has no confidence in its contents, why should anyone else entertain it?

Conservative MPs were already muttering earlier in the week that Sunak had just days to save his premiership, and that was with Jenrick still very much on-board. Now, senior party figures are admitting they expect a no confidence vote, and Political Editor of the Daily Express, David Maddox, is “absolutely convinced” of one. If Jenrick had wanted to oust Sunak, he couldn’t have timed it better.

It certainly appears as though the Downing Street dominoes are finally beginning to fall. Jenrick’s resignation conveniently coincided with Suella Braverman’s barnstorming departure speech in the House of Commons:

All of this comes down to a simple question: who governs Britain? Where does ultimate authority in the UK sit? Is it with the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament? Or is it in the vague, shifting and unaccountable concept of ”international law”?’

‘It is now or never. The Conservative Party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another Bill destined to fail. Do we fight for sovereignty or let our party die? I refuse to sit by and allow the trust that millions of people have put in us be discarded like an inconvenient detail.’

Sunak meanwhile, made an ‘impromptu’ appearance at the 1922 Committee – which is never a good look for a sitting Prime Minister, and suggests the letters of no confidence are already in transit. The question remains however, where exactly does the Conservative Party limp from here? Sunak has been a dead man walking for a while now, but even assuming he is removed from office – who do you replace him with? The options are far from appetising.

Of the frontrunners, Kemi Badenoch looks the bookmakers’ favourite at this stage, but she is as yet untested in high office. Braverman is almost certain to throw her hat into the ring, but while she no doubt speaks for the right of the party, her divisive tenure as Home Secretary is unlikely to unite the party. Penny Mordaunt may ooze competence at the Dispatch Box, but her previous support for self-identification damaged her chances last time around, and is likely to do so in future. Then of course, there’s David Cameron – and I see no reason to believe the right-wing is going to stomach his EU affections for a second time. There’s also no point giving up and calling a general election now – you might as well hand Keir Starmer the keys to Downing Street and have done with it.

There is one other possibility: the party could be rescued from the outside. While otherwise engaged swinging through the trees in the Australian outback, Nigel Farage cannot be unaware of the turmoil engulfing Number 10; it appears he may have timed his sabbatical just right. Two months ago, Farage was reported as saying “I’d be very surprised if I were not Conservative leader by ‘26. Very surprised.” But with the odds on him becoming the next Tory leader now as low as 14:1, he may have to bring that forward a touch. Although Reform UK leader Richard Tice recently made it clear that Farage would not join the Conservatives while Sunak was at the helm; in a very short space of time, that may no longer be an issue.

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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