Yet another Tory leadership contest is not the Christmas present the nation deserves

Editorial: Rumours in Westminster of a potential challenge to Rishi Sunak may come to nought – but the fact it is talked about at all is a sigh of a premiership in deep crisis

(Dave Brown)

The terminal decay of the Conservative government has been palpable for some time and the dramas and gyrations of recent days have demonstrated that the process is intensifying.

Since the start of the week, the prime minister has been attacked (again) by his former home secretary, Suella Braverman; suffered the resignation of his one-time close ally, the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick; found himself ridiculed in another combative performance by the Labour leader in the Commons; and tied his political fate to the doomed Rwanda plan to deport asylum seekers and “stop the boats”.

Quite the week in politics. No surprise, then, that the gossip about yet another leadership challenge has been swirling around Westminster. Like most such rumours, it may come to naught, but the very fact that it is being talked about at all is indicative of a premiership in crisis.

It is no longer enough for Rishi Sunak to blame his predecessors for his unhappy inheritance, true though that is. Mr Sunak did indeed have to clear up the economic mess left behind by Liz Truss’s brief time in power, and the toxic ethical legacy bequeathed him by Boris Johnson. Indeed, both of these previous occupants of No 10 haunt him still.

Ms Truss, addicted to Instagram and her own propaganda, spends an inordinate amount of time attempting to rehabilitate herself, albeit with diminishing success. Mr Johnson is a rather more high-profile ghoul, his shortcomings as premier constantly rehearsed at the Covid-19 Inquiry. Any Tory hopes that the mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis and the disgrace of Partygate may fade as the next election approaches are confounded by the proceedings in Baroness Hallett’s inquiry room.

Mr Sunak, and his party, cannot escape their past. The recent arrival of David, now Lord, Cameron, as foreign secretary, though a welcome appointment, also reminds the public of just how long the Tories have been in power and how short they are of top-calibre talent in the House of Commons.

Yet Mr Sunak has had time enough to make mistakes of his own, including, as it happens, reappointing Ms Braverman to the home office last year. He has too often shown an unsure political touch, not least his baffling attempt to present himself as the “candidate of change” during the last party conference. His successes in diplomacy, especially warming relations with Brussels and Washington, have not compensated for the domestic blunders, such as the cancellation of HS2.

The primacy placed by him on migration has been the most grievous error of all, and it has contributed to Mr Sunak’s current travails. As the country continues to struggle with the cost of living crisis, the voters will surely not understand why so many Conservative MPs apparently desire nothing so much as another leadership election. That is not the Christmas present the nation deserves.

Too many of the parliamentary party, grotesquely dominated by the hard right, are seriously considering taking another few weeks off from running the country with a leadership contest. That would mean deepening the divisions in the parliamentary party, followed by an appeal to about 100,000 active party members, a body of men and women some distance removed from the feelings of the country as a whole. It is another holiday from reality that the public will not forgive. For a supposedly populist party, today’s Conservatives seem extraordinarily careless about public opinion.

A fourth prime minister since the 2019 general election would be an absurdity built on an obscenity. It probably won’t happen, if only because, when he quit the Commons, Mr Johnson removed himself from contention, and because there is, despite Ms Braverman’s best efforts, no obvious alternative to Mr Sunak, nor the time for a new leader to establish themselves.

The country may thus be spared the spectacle of yet another episode of the Tory soap opera, but the open divisions and lack of discipline are still damaging. Mr Sunak and his administration seem destined to stumble from crisis to emergency to farce over the coming months, until the general election arrives and puts all concerned out of their misery.

“Unite or die” is Mr Sunak’s message to his party. He is right – but even he may be underestimating the contempt so many of them hold him in, and how nihilistic their mood has grown.

It’s a sad reflection of his predicament that the most popular thing Mr Sunak could do now would be to call a general election.