Boris’s backers are circling. But ‘Sunak the snake’ has defanged the right

The prime minister’s critics demanding a ‘true Brexit’ and ‘real Conservatism’ are arguing themselves into irrelevance, writes John Rentoul

Rishi Sunak has nothing to fear from the Bring Back Boris crowd (PA)

The promotional material for the Bring Back Boris rally in Bournemouth on Saturday looks closer to that for those glitzy Christian stadium events where the faithful prepare for the Rapture. Photos of the star speakers are arrayed at the top of the webpage against a black background. The big beasts are all up in lights: Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Peter Cruddas, the Tory peer who is organising the “Take Control Conference and gala dinner”.

It is not actually called the Bring Back Boris rally, but it might as well be. It is run by the Conservative Democratic Organisation, a grassroots group agitating for more power for Conservative Party members. The CDO says it is not a Johnson fan club, and the man himself is not expected to attend, but eight bottles of plonk signed by him are up for grabs. Andrea Jenkyns, MP for Morley and Outwood and co-chair of the European Research Group, will be singing the national anthem. Clearly, it’s dinner and a show.

The demand for more power to the members seems to be code for saying that Johnson was ousted by a cabal of MPs and would have been restored to the premiership if his name had been put to a vote of the wider party. No matter that Johnson could have put himself forward for a vote of party members if he had wanted to in October and chose not to, accepting that it “would not work” to try to govern without the support of two-thirds of Tory MPs. For the true believers, the blame for that lies with Tory MPs and not with the only rightful prime minister across the water.

However, the most important thing about the Bournemouth line-up is how toothless they are. They are less the four horsepersons of the apocalypse and more a fringe revivalist sect that has fallen on hard times. Rishi Sunak will hardly be quaking in his boots. The noisy preachers are still making a racket, but it’s in a smaller corner of the party – and, increasingly, no one is paying them any attention.

Dorries and Rees-Mogg have abandoned politics for shock-jock slots on GB News. Dorries is standing down as an MP, awaiting her peerage. I was struck by Rees-Mogg’s hostile question to Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, in the Commons yesterday asking if “civil service idleness” were the reason for the U-turn on scrapping EU laws. That suggests that he doesn’t think he will have to work with civil servants ever again.

Nor does the Conservative Democratic Organisation have the kind of presence in local Tory associations that could put pressure on MPs. Paul Goodman, editor of Conservative Home, reported that most Tory MPs told him that there was no evidence of CDO activity on their patch. It may be that many party members would have preferred Johnson to carry on as prime minister, but it is surprising how quickly the caravan has moved on. There is still a lot of bitterness against Sunak on social media for his “coup” against Johnson, but most of the party has wiped last year from its memory already. In the latest Conservative Home straw poll, members gave Sunak a net positive satisfaction rating of 47 per cent.

In the recent past, the real right-wing pressure on Conservative leaders came from outside the party. David Cameron promised an EU referendum because otherwise Ukip, led by Nigel Farage, would have taken enough Tory votes to hand the 2015 election to Ed Miliband. Johnson’s elevation to the premiership in 2019 was rocket-boosted by the Brexit Party, also led by Nigel Farage, winning the European parliament elections.

Hence the significance of what didn’t happen in the local elections last week. The Reform Party, successor to the Brexit Party, disappeared without trace. It put up candidates in just 1 in 10 seats, choosing its best territory mainly in northeast England and the midlands, and won an average of 6 per cent of the vote in the wards where it stood. In the last equivalent local elections in 2019, Ukip averaged 19 per cent in the wards it fought.

This suggests that Reform is unlikely to pose a serious threat to the Conservative vote at the general election. Which might seem surprising when net immigration is running at a record high and the small boats are still crossing the Channel, but it does seem that Farageism has blown itself out. The agitation against the “wrong sort of Brexit” does not seem to have the same hold on the popular imagination as the demand to “get Brexit done” four years ago.

Partly, this may be because the opposition to Sunak from the right is incoherent, including supporters of high-spending Johnson and of tax-cutting fantasist Liz Truss. This is reflected in the programme of the Reform Party, an odd mix of more Brexit, a smaller state and covid lockdown scepticism.

Sunak has many problems at the next election – the economy, the NHS and small boats are just the three most daunting ones – but what he does not have to worry about is losing votes to the revivalist preachers of the One True Brexit. They are arguing themselves into irrelevance. His critics may call him “Sunak the snake”, but the prime minister has defanged the threat from the right.