Tory MPs’ agonising dilemma: Should they dump Liz Truss now or later?

In my view, the party ought to get Rishi Sunak in as prime minister without a vote, writes John Rentoul

It is always easier to do nothing and hope that something will turn up (Reuters)

Winston Churchill wrote about the loyalties that are owed to a party leader: “If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed.”

Most Conservative MPs are proud of this expression of ruthless pragmatism, and they are discussing how Churchill’s current successor will be disposed of. Many of them have probably forgotten Churchill’s next sentence: “But this last extreme process cannot be carried out every day; and certainly not in the days just after he has been chosen.” No one knows how many days’ grace Churchill had in mind for a new leader, but 42 seems a bit soon.

On the one hand, if the Tory party is to be true to the spirit of a pole-axing, should it not be carried out as quickly as possible? On the other, Churchill has a point in his implication that the party will look ridiculous if it deploys the ultimate sanction so soon after presenting the people with their new national leader.

Tory MPs have an acute timing problem: should they change leader immediately to prevent further damage; or should they let the Jeremy Hunt regency run to stabilise things first?

They are not helped in their deliberations by two opinion polls of Tory members. Only last month, these people chose Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak by a margin of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. Now, according to YouGov, 55 per cent of them want Truss to resign. If the contest were re-run, the same proportion, 55 per cent, would vote for Sunak and only 25 per cent would vote for Truss (the other 20 per cent wouldn’t vote, wouldn’t say or don’t know). This is an even more pro-Sunak result than another poll of party members by JL Partners published yesterday, which found 43 per cent for Sunak, 28 per cent for Truss and 29 per cent refusing to choose.

But party members are divided. A large minority still hold a candle for Boris Johnson and are furious with MPs for getting rid of him. Given a free choice of names by YouGov, Johnson came top, with 32 per cent, followed by Sunak on 23 per cent and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, on 10 per cent. Some of them probably forget that they wanted Johnson out, and are retrospectively rationalising their vote for Truss, telling themselves that they should never have been put in the position of choosing between a backstabber and a libertarian ideologue.

The ferment of unhappiness at the grassroots might tempt MPs to delay the pole-axing. The result of the leadership election has already been reversed in policy, in that Hunt is now doing what Sunak would have done – although the fiscal position is worse because the crisis of confidence in the markets has put interest rates up higher than they would otherwise have been.

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Given that the prime minister is powerless, with the real decisions being made in 11 Downing Street, Tory MPs might be tempted to leave her where she is until a cooling-off period has expired. If MPs are going to rewrite the rules to elect Sunak unopposed to replace Truss, without allowing the members a say, they might calculate that they shouldn’t make it look as if they are reversing the members’ decision so soon.

On the other hand, if Tory members would prefer Sunak in a run-off against any plausible alternative – a question not fully tested by the pollsters – maybe the rage of a minority of the members is a price worth paying for securing not just Sunak’s policies but his leadership and communication skills as well.

In my view, Conservative MPs ought to get Sunak in as prime minister without a vote, make Penny Mordaunt foreign secretary and deputy prime minister, and keep Hunt as chancellor. And if that is what they should do, they should do it today. They should save Truss from the misery of Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow.

But they probably won’t. It is always easier to do nothing and hope that something will turn up. As Winston Churchill never said.