Senior Tories believe the threat of a summer general election is being used by Downing Street to deter a rebellion against Rishi Sunak’s leadership, before a perilous set of local elections this week.
Westminster has been abuzz with rumours of an early election, despite the persistent double-digit lead enjoyed by Labour in the polls. While Downing St sources have played down speculation of any imminent announcement from Sunak, influential MPs believe No 10 is holding open the possibility of an early election to keep rebellious colleagues in check.
“If the prime minister went to the palace and said, ‘this is just hopeless and it’s not going to get any better, we just need to go to the country’, we would end up going to the country,” said one influential Tory. “That will act as a discipline on colleagues. Obviously, some would like an election – but the vast majority would not.”
While the mood among Tory MPs is largely one of resignation rather than agitation against Sunak, a wipeout this week including losses for Ben Houchen in the Tees Valley mayoral race and Andy Street in the West Midlands could be enough to ignite an attempt to remove the prime minister.
Election analysts believe the Tories could lose as many as half the council seats they are defending this week. Most of the seats were last contested in 2021, when the government was riding high and enjoying a poll bounce for the Covid vaccine rollout.
An effort to shore up Sunak has already begun, including a flurry of activity that saw him pledge to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. Cabinet figures including defence secretary Grant Shapps and home secretary James Cleverly have already spoken out against any potential move against Sunak.
Matt Warman, deputy chairman of the Conservative One Nation group, told the Observer that party discipline must now kick in. “The Conservative party has always been a broad church – it is the most successful party in electoral history because of that, not despite it,” he said. “Supporters want us to unite against the genuine and underestimated threat to the economy and public services of a Labour government. Floating voters need us to so they can assess the real options available at the ballot box.
“Divided parties are doomed to opposition and we must come together to find pragmatic solutions to the challenges, domestically and globally, that we face today. We know that Keir Starmer’s Labour simply are not up to that task.”
Despite the calls for unity, senior figures believe Sunak is at the helm of a party now more divided than it was before Labour’s landslide under Tony Blair. One former minister said party discipline was now “even worse than in 1997”.
“They don’t seem to want to group around Rishi Sunak,” they said. “The handicap he has is he wasn’t elected by the party members, he took over in the circumstances post-Johnson and post-Truss. No party leader has been quite in that situation. So people are saying, ‘well, what’s the point of being loyal’.”
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One advantage for the prime minister is that the plotting against him is not said to be fully formed or particularly organised. Letters of no confidence from 52 MPs are required to trigger a vote on Sunak’s leadership and there is no evidence that anywhere near that number are considering such a move. However, a hardened group of rebels will agitate against Sunak after the local election results.
One former minister said there was little discernible appetite for a move against Sunak, partly because morale was so low. “People know they’re going down – they all do. It’s just a question of what is best, looking forward,” they said. “It’s about having the best campaign that you can and making sure you win enough seats to be a credible opposition – that’s the basic foundation. If they lose that, then we’re in real trouble.”
Downing St sources dismissed the claims that Sunak could call an election imminently. While deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden is understood to have discussed the idea of a summer poll, the biggest figures in No 10, including campaign director Isaac Levido and chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith are both said to be advocating an election in the late autumn to give the economy more time to show signs of recovery.