It’s crunch time for Rwanda – but mainly for Rishi’s leadership

The Rwanda rebels may fail to toughen up the bill, but success for them is putting Sunak in the firing line for the party’s looming election defeat and replacing him with one of their own, says Andrew Grice

The space between us: Rishi Sunak with his now ex-deputy co-chairman Lee Anderson, who resigned the post in rebellion against the Rwanda bill (PA)

The biggest Conservative backbench revolt since he became prime minister makes this a dangerous moment for Rishi Sunak.

Yesterday’s rebellion by 60 MPs over the Safety of Rwanda Bill was a coordinated show of strength by his right-wing enemies. His allies had hoped to the limit the number to about 40.

It’s not merely crunch time for his flawed scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, but for his premiership.

There are ominous echoes of the never-ending rebellion by the hardline Eurosceptics, dubbed the “bastards” by John Major, who made his life as PM a misery after he agreed the EU’s Maastricht Treaty. Even some of the characters are the same; the right-wing rebels, never without a cause, have moved on from the EU to immigration.

The “bastards”, like today’s Rwanda rebels, rejected pleas for party unity ahead of an election – and it ended in Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997. They, too, waged a marathon Trojan war against a leader they believed had abducted their party.

Today, the air at Westminster is thick with talk of plots against Sunak. The timing of this week’s opinion poll suggesting a 1997-style wipeout, funded by anonymous Tory donors, was hardly a coincidence.

Incredibly, Sunak’s enemies plan to force a vote of confidence in Sunak as Tory leader in the hope of ousting him and installing what they ludicrously call “a real Conservative” to lead the party into the election. When you press them on exactly who that might be, you either get a blank look or several different answers. Which hardly inspires confidence about the plotters’ abilities of their chances of success.

True, last night’s rebellion was something of a free hit; there was no danger of defeating the government because the opposition parties were never going to join the Tory right in toughening the Rwanda Bill. However, it was significant that they were egged on by Boris Johnson, a reminder that he, too, is not reconciled to Sunak’s leadership.

The size of last night’s rebellion makes it an anxious time for Sunak ahead of tonight’s third reading vote on the Bill. This time the opposition parties will vote against, so it would take only about 32 Tory rebels to kill the Bill. That outcome would be the beginning of the end for Sunak; the betting at Westminster is that he would either face a Tory leadership vote or avoid one by calling a snap general election.

Almost certainly, it won’t happen; enough rebels will back down and the Bill will clear its final Commons hurdle. Yet, as one hardline rebel put it darkly, “this will not be the end of it” as far as Sunak is concerned. His enemies need the backing of 53 Tory MPs to demand a confidence vote – fewer than the rebels’ ranks last night. I think Sunak would win such a vote; even some Tories who think it was a mistake to make him leader rightly accept that installing a fourth PM since the last election would persuade even more voters the party had taken leave of its senses.

But the damage inflicted by holding a confidence vote would be huge, extending the Tory psychodrama for another season and highlighting the party’s divisions just as some people tune into politics ahead of the election. Sunak allies hoped the turn of the year would concentrate minds. Fat chance.

The resignation of Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith as Tory deputy chairs so they could join the revolt is a blow to Sunak. Both are prominent red wall MPs, and so their departure symbolises the fracturing of the 2019 coalition which won the Tories a huge Commons majority by invading Labour’s heartlands in the north and Midlands. Sunak might try to recall them before the election, but damage has been done.

The right-wingers, who claim Sunak failed to deliver concessions on the Rwanda Bill he promised them before Christmas, think he has written off the red wall. They view his decision to recall David Cameron to the cabinet as an attempt to prevent a crushing defeat that could keep the Tories out of power for 10 or 15 years by propping up the blue wall in the south. Some red-wall Tories rebelled in the hope that calling for a tougher Rwanda Bill might help them save their own skins. It’s a bad sign for their party when desperate MPs plough their own furrow.

The Tory rebels should recognise they are not going to get the leader of their dreams, that they can wound Sunak but can’t kill him. They should be careful what they wish for. Their attempt to toughen up the Rwanda Bill is part of their campaign to blame Sunak’s alleged weakness for the party’s looming election defeat when they try to install one of their own as his successor. But in making that defeat more likely by destabilising his government now, they will be blamed for it, and they will deserve it.