Rishi Sunak is running scared from his zombie administration

Robert Jenrick’s resignation and salvos from Suella Braverman mean the prime minister faces a real threat of being brought down by his own side, says Paul Clements

Walking dead: The Conservatives are out to bring down Rishi Sunak (Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Wire)

Rishi Sunak’s government has turned into a zombie administration.

In the cult 1960s movie Night of the Living Dead, every time the trapped inhabitants of a farmhouse tried to escape, they were confronted by flesh-eating ghouls. Sunak could be forgiven for feeling the same about the Tory MPs now threatening to devour him.

The resignation of immigration minister Robert Jenrick last night means Sunak now faces a real threat of being brought down as prime minister.

To avoid his flagship Rwanda policy being defeated by Right-wing Tory MPs in the Commons next week, he may be forced to turn it into a vote of confidence in his government.

The prospect of a general election and a near-certain Labour landslide might save his political skin for a few more days. But zombies do not go away that easily.

And nor do Conservative MPs, at the fag-end of 13 years of rule, five different leaders and endless political blood-letting.

Right-wing MPs could respond by forcing a vote of confidence in Sunak himself.

In all probability, he would see them off the first time. But, as in the horror film, they would be back.

Jenrick’s abandonment is not the only front on which Sunak is battling.

Yesterday, just as Sunak’s former ally was preparing to dispatch himself, with a particularly long resignation letter – two, full sides of House of Commons A4 – former home secretary Suella Braverman was giving a personal statement to the Commons.

While her valedictory remarks, billed as her so-called “Geoffrey Howe moment”, were mostly about policy – about how the Rwanda bill would not work, and the need for “measures that start to better reflect public frustration on legal migration” – an embattled Sunak would have found some key lines personally unhelpful.

“All of this comes down to a simple question,” she wondered. “Who governs Britain?”

Not again, Suella. As simple questions go, it’s one that has bedevilled Westminster ever since the UK joined the EC five decades ago, and haunted successive administrations after the 2016 Brexit vote that was supposed to be the silver bullet that laid it to rest once and for all.

Having said her piece from the backbenches, up Suella rose again this morning, to be interviewed by a combative Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. You can’t keep a good zombie down.

“Ultimately, this bill will fail,” she declared of Rishi’s “semi-skimmed” Rwanda plan, and asked instead for an “honest change of course”. Her insistence that “I want the prime minister to succeed” rang as hollow as a half-eaten skull.

Like the horror movie hero emerging from the farmhouse cellar with a shotgun and his last remaining bullets, Robinson accused her of being a “headline-grabber” intent on destabilising the prime minister. “You want to bring him down and take his job,” he said. “You’ve had meetings to discuss changing leader.”

If she indeed has her eye on the top job, Suella was, for now, keeping her powder dry. Gunpowder, presumably.

When it comes to resurrecting political careers that have long been buried, the Conservative Party has form. Failed Tory leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith later found ministerial offices. Even David Cameron, the man who drove a stake through the heart of the UK’s membership of the EU, has himself come back from the dead, a twist that no one in Westminster saw coming.

Now, there’s an even more chilling prospect.

Last night, Newsnight political editor Nick Watt revealed that a former cabinet minister had outlined to him a three-year plan to re-install Boris Johnson as party leader, under a scenario whereby “Rishi Sunak loses the election and stands down as Conservative leader, a new leader comes in, they fail… and at that point up goes the cry: ‘Bring back Boris.’”

Sometimes, the only thing to do is hide behind the sofa.