Even Conservative Party members are very unhappy with this government

The scale of grassroots discontent bodes ill for forthcoming elections, says Sean O’Grady

Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty look at the Christmas tree outside No 10 (PA)

From the ever-useful Conservative Home comes the news that the Tory membership is unhappy. About almost everything and everyone. This isn’t all that surprising; it mirrors the slump in Conservative support across the country as a whole, and the chaos of the last year. Strong and stable government underpinned by a parliamentary majority of 70-plus? If only.

But the extent of the disenchantment is still striking. You have to concede that the Conservative membership actually disowning their own government’s economic policy is quite a moment, even in these strange times. Some 49 per cent do not support the policy, against 42 per cent who back it, with around 9 per cent saying they don’t know (possibly too bewildered to answer).

Naturally, they hanker after the tax cuts and the sense of Tory principle they glimpsed all too briefly in the Truss-Kwarteng days. They wanted both tax cuts and public spending cuts, as Kwarteng tried to implement, rather than tax cuts and extra borrowing. Now they have all three, hence the discontent.

The other point to make here is that if Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak can’t convince their own members of the wisdom of their “tough choices”, then what hope do they have of persuading the wider electorate? One of Boris Johnson’s most baleful legacies was an ingrained belief that the voters can have it all, and never have to choose between no public services and paying more for them.

It’s possible that the rumoured relaunch of the Sunak premiership – after barely a month – might win favour. The prime minister is promising to be tough on migration, and tough on eco-protesters. The plans were derided by Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, and it’s fair to say we’ve heard them all before.

Sunak will certainly need something to lift his lowly personal ratings among members. Whereas his arrival brought little in the way of a bounce in the polls, members were at least more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But after the autumn statement, the goodwill has disappeared, and he is now towards the bottom of their league table of cabinet ministers.

The prime minister is languishing on a net approval rating of +9 per cent, just below Oliver Dowden. By contrast, the members’ current favourites, Ben Wallace and Kemi Badenoch, are sitting on net ratings of +83 per cent and +63 per cent respectively. Nor can the PM draw much consolation from his chancellor’s dismal -10 per cent, or even the immigration minister Robert Jenrick’s -25 per cent. Suella Braverman’s +22 per cent (which is modest, but still better than Sunak’s rating) points to what the activists would like to see done about the small boats, and their scepticism that the present occupants of the Home Office will deliver.

Overall, the cabinet ranks very low. As Paul Goodman, editor of Conservative Home, puts it: “The average score in this month’s cabinet league table is 21.7. The average in September, the only month in which the survey was issued during Liz Truss’s brief term as prime minister, was 23.7. In August, the last month of Boris Johnson’s premiership, it was the same. So, yes, it’s a record recent low, but not by much. The panel has clearly felt that the government, in its various manifestations, has not been performing well for some time.”

It bodes ill for getting the party supporters out at the local elections in May – or at the next general election.