And we’re off... another cack-handed plot by Tories with a death wish

Simon Clarke’s intervention was deliberately timed to overshadow Rishi Sunak’s attempt to steady the Tory ship after last week’s damaging divisions over the Rwanda scheme, writes Andrew Grice. It won’t work

Clarke’s warning is the latest instalment of a plot to oust the prime minister (PA)

Simon Clarke’s stark warning that the Conservatives will be “massacred” if Rishi Sunak leads them into the general election is the latest instalment of a plot to oust the prime minister.

The former levelling up secretary and Liz Truss fan’s attack on Sunak’s “uninspiring leadership” is more worrying for the PM than previous demands for yet another change of leader – by the maverick right-wing MP Andrea Jenkyns and David Frost, the Tory peer and former Brexit secretary. Clarke has more credibility than them. Nadine Dorries, the Boris Johnson cheerleader who wrote a book, The Plot, about his “assassination,” greeted news of his manoeuvre with: “And, we’re off.”

Frost is the frontman for the Conservative Britain Alliance of anonymous Tory donors, who have commissioned an opinion poll clearly designed to destabilise the PM.

The latest instalment in today’s Telegraph includes the loaded and psephologically dodgy question of whether people would vote for a hypothetical Tory leader who was stronger on crime and migration and who would reduce taxes and NHS waiting lists. Surprise, surprise, in this game of fantasy politics, the mythical leader would beat Keir Starmer, while Sunak would not.

(Never mind whether the UK’s disillusioned voters would believe such promises or that Tory right-wingers are divided over who should be their leadership candidate. Kemi Badenoch’s stock is rising but some are “selling” Suella Braverman).

Back in the real world, Sunak’s critics are a long way short of the 53 names required to trigger a confidence vote in him as party leader – 15 per cent of Tory MPs. Only two, Clarke and Jenkyns, have gone public, though 60 voted against the bill declaring Rwanda a safe country last week.

It’s true that scores of Tories privately share Clarke’s diagnosis that the party is heading for the rocks. The backbench plots which eventually ousted Theresa May, Johnson and Truss all started with a few people before, as Johnson put it after his downfall, “the herd moved”.

More Tories, desperate (like Clarke) to save their own seats, might conclude they have nothing to lose by installing a fourth leader since the 2010 election. Momentum against Sunak could build after two tricky by-elections next month and local authority elections in May.

But that’s not where we are today; the vast majority of Tory MPs, even some disappointed with Sunak’s performance, think another leadership contest would, as one told me, “persuade voters we had finally lost the plot and there would be no way back”. For that reason, I don’t think Sunak will be stampeded out of office like his three most recent predecessors. Indeed, there has been a coordinated fightback by senior Tories against Clarke’s incendiary attack and Truss distanced herself from it.

So did Priti Patel, a possible future leadership contender favoured by Jenkyns.

But the plotting, even if cack-handed, can still destabilise Sunak. There will be more unwelcome noises off next month when Truss and Clarke join other right-wingers in launching the Popular Conservatism group.

“Five families” on the right will become six, even though the last thing the party needs is another faction. The subtext is that the Tories are unpopular under Sunak, yet Truss conveniently forgets that he is weighed down by the baggage she and Johnson dumped on him.

Clarke’s intervention was deliberately timed to overshadow Sunak’s attempt to steady the Tory ship after last week’s damaging divisions over the Rwanda scheme. Unusually, Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are frantically talking up the prospect of tax cuts in the March Budget.

Normally, such expectations are played down but after floating cuts to income tax (the most likely reduction), national insurance contributions and inheritance tax, there’s a danger the PM and chancellor overpromise and underdeliver.

The display of disunity over the Rwanda bill means there won’t now be an “immigration election”, as some Sunak advisers had urged. But the party is united on tax cuts, and the economy offers Sunak’s best hope of finding chinks in Labour’s armour while talking about the number one issue for voters. It might or might not work, but Sunak finally has a plan and intends to stick to it this time.

Despite that, here we go again. In what was a relatively quiet political week, positive headlines about tax cuts have been supplanted by more about Tory splits, again telling voters that the Tories are squabbling amongst themselves rather than addressing the public’s concerns. Ominously for Sunak, many of his MPs have dismissed the warning last week by Isaac Levido, the Tories’ campaign strategist, who rightly told the 1922 Committee: “Divided parties fail.”

Clarke’s intervention makes the “massacre” he predicts more likely – not less. His self-fulfilling prophecy is further evidence that Sunak’s party has a death wish. The best way to keep alive its flickering hopes at the election is to rally behind the prime minister, rather than constantly undermine him.