Leadership challenge? What leadership challenge? When the whispers began last night that a senior Conservative MP would be calling for Rishi Sunak’s resignation, Westminster braced itself for a leadership battle that would tear apart the Conservative Party.
And when Sir Simon Clarke’s piece in the Telegraph dropped, it did not disappoint. The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Sunak’s number two when he was Chancellor) launched an absolutely blistering attack on his former boss in which he said that although Sunak was not solely responsible for the state the Conservatives find themselves in, his “uninspiring leadership” was an “obstacle to [the party’s] recovery”.
When the whispers began last night that a senior Conservative MP would be calling for Rishi Sunak’s resignation, Westminster braced itself for a leadership battle that would tear apart the Conservative Party
PA
But if Clarke was hoping to become the plucky leader of a rebellion, he had another thing coming. Not a single Tory MP rowed him behind him, and in fact, many took to social media to demonstwte their support for the PM and their disdain for Clarke. Even Liz Truss and Priti Patel — hardly Sunak’s closest allies — made it clear that they were not in the Clarke camp.
And when it came to PMQs, if anything, Sunak looked on stronger form than he has for weeks. As he came into the chamber there were loud cheers from his backbenchers, and not a single one asked him a tricky question. There was a frisson of excitement in the chamber when Theresa May stood to speak, but far from criticising the PM, she simply asked him to implement the measures laid out in her important new report on Type 1 Diabetes.
If this was a conspiracy to topple the Prime Minister, it was very damp squib indeed.
All that said, with the Conservatives in such a desperate position in the polls (a fact Clarke helpfully drew attention to), Sunak can ill afford even the merest hint of leadership speculation.
The problem for a Prime Minister who is unpopular with his own backbenchers is that his standing in Parliament as a whole is compromised. If Tory rebels hadn’t so publicly demonstrated their displeasure with the Rwanda bill, would the House of Lords have had the guts to vote to delay it on Monday?
Perhaps not: traditionally, the Lords vote in favour of flagship legislation from the Government, on the unspoken understanding that as the upper chamber, it doesn’t have the same electoral legitimacy as the Commons. But when Sunak is both trailing in the polls and his own MPs are attacking him and his policies, it’s hardly a surprise that the Lords feel emboldened to do the same.
Given that Clarke was perhaps the most strident of the Tory Rwanda rebels (he was one of just 11 who actually voted down the Bill at third reading) it’s ironic that perhaps the only lasting impact of his intervention last night will be to put wind in the sails of the peers who are attempting to soften the legislation. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like that’s a paradox he’ll have to accept