Rishi Sunak cannot catch a break. Any relief this week that the much mooted coup against the Prime Minister post local elections failed to come to pass will be short-lived in Downing Street.
His first Prime Minister’s Questions since the results was defined not by MPs uniting, but one of his own side crossing the floor. Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, cited Keir Starmer’s impressive act transforming the party.
But if her fellow Tory-turned-Labour MP Dan Poulter’s defection was unpopular, Elphike’s is reaching a new level of vitriol. As one Tory MP puts it of their former colleague who was viewed to sit on the right of the Tory party: “It would have made more sense if she went to Reform. She’s gender critical, anti-woke, very right on tax, obviously very right on immigration. She thinks Starmer is a muppet – or at least she did very recently.”
Labour MPs don’t seem too convinced of their new colleague either – with several privately questioning the wisdom of the move.
If more MPs switch, a drip-drip of defections will be used by some around Sunak to argue for a summer election rather than letting the decay set in. But when it comes to waiting, his bigger problem is those staying inside the tent.
After the local elections, Sunak is safe; there was no coup. But that’s partly down to the fact any of the candidates who might have been able to muster enough support to present a challenge don’t believe the job looks particularly appealing – with six months to go until an election.
It means the more likely reality awaiting Sunak is months of leadership parading and debates about what should happen after defeat. At the Downing Street MP briefing on Wednesday, the Prime Minister, party chairman Richard Holden and adviser Isaac Levido attempted to put a more positive spin on the local election results than that shared by the commentariat in recent days. The No 10 argument is that while the Tories may have lost nearly half the council seats up for grabs, the national vote swing extrapolated from the results was a nine-point Labour lead, far lower than the recent national voting intention polls.
Now, one can easily argue a general election would have a different result to how people vote in the local elections for multiple reasons (including anti-Tory tactical voting, a potential Scottish Labour recovery and the number of seats Reform stand in). But for Downing Street, they believe it provides hope that the election result is not a foregone conclusion.
Alas for Sunak, so far few Tory MPs have come round to this way of thinking. It means the risk for the Prime Minister is that the coming months are dominated not by taking the fight to Labour but by one long post-mortem on an election result that has yet to come to pass.
Among those sharing views on where the party needs to move on policy is former home secretary Suella Braverman, who has called for Sunak to change course, and on the other end of the debate Michael Gove, who told the Cabinet to invoke the spirit of Kate Moss and refrain from comfort eating on hard-right policies. Former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the party must do more than “arguably competent management of the status quo”.
Yet while Downing Street is officially in “listening mode”, there is little appetite for a dramatic change in strategy. First, they don’t want to give off a sense of panic by jolting to one side. Second, the view is that a period of competence along with pressing Labour on a lack of a plan forms a key part of any strategy – even if Sunak’s team are looking at ways to get their vote out and away from Reform.
Yet there is no shortage of Tory MPs keen to fill the void, as was evidenced by former Home Office minister Robert Jenrick on Wednesday morning when he launched a report alongside former minister Neil O’Brien on how the party should cut legal migration. While the pair said this could be done now rather than in a manifesto, the response in parts of No 10 was lukewarm.
Similarly Liz Truss’s PopCon outfit is warming up – planning more reach out and events as it attempts to build a movement in anticipation of a battle for the soul of the Tory party post-election. Downing Street already takes the view Truss has said enough, what with her book and full-on UK and US publicity tour, but many MPs feel they need to make the arguments now as things could move very quickly post defeat.
The fear among Sunak’s inner circle is that this soon becomes a larger group – with potential leadership hopefuls such as Braverman, Priti Patel, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch all becoming more vocal in the coming months.
“Everything happens faster now, including polling,” says a Tory figure. Many feel they need to either recruit members now who will help install a candidate on the right come the time – or for those considering a tilt at the leadership they need to do enough to set out their stall.
It means that Sunak and his team face a new challenge. Rather than shoring the Prime Minister up as they have over the past month, they now need to find a way to convince MPs that despite disappointing local election results there is a chance of changing the polls – and a reason to fight Labour rather than one another.
Katy Balls is political editor at ‘The Spectator’