If Tory plotters thought they’d found a way to get rid of Sunak, it’s about to backfire

An ‘election wipeout’ poll commissioned by the PM’s enemies is intended to destabilise him as he faces a revolt over the Rwanda bill, writes John Rentoul – but it won’t work

The timing of this expensive poll would seem to be aimed at the Rwanda bill that will be debated in the Commons tomorrow and Wednesday (PA)

They want him out, and they don’t care how much damage they do to the Conservative Party in the attempt. An unholy alliance of The Daily Telegraph, David Frost and unnamed “donors” are plotting to engineer a challenge to Rishi Sunak’s leadership.

The front page of today’s Telegraph is devoted to a YouGov poll that models current voting intentions in every constituency, which suggests that the Tories are heading for a “1997-style wipeout” and that 11 cabinet ministers will lose their seats.

According to theTelegraph, “the poll was commissioned by a group of Conservative donors called the ’Conservative Britain Alliance’ and carried out by YouGov, working with Lord Frost”. Frost has an opinion article on the newspaper’s front page headlined “Stunningly awful poll must shake Sunak out of his complacency”.

Frost was Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator but he fell out with his boss because Johnson was, in Frost’s opinion, insufficiently Brexity and not a true Conservative. He supported Liz Truss and would presumably now support someone such as Suella Braverman for the Tory leadership.

The timing of this expensive poll would seem to be aimed at the Rwanda bill, which will be debated in the Commons tomorrow and Wednesday. Paul Goodman, the Tory former MP who edits the Conservative Home website, said: “I smell a rat – or the seventh cavalry, depending on one’s view.”

Goodman points out that Frost wrote last year that Tory MPs have a “responsibility to consider” whether “the current path can take us to an election win”, concluding: “If they don’t, they shouldn’t be resigning themselves to it – they should be doing something about it.”

In other words, they should be trying to amend the Rwanda bill so that it explicitly defies the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which Braverman and Robert Jenrick, her former minister of state at the Home Office, think is necessary to make it effective in stopping the boats.

And if they cannot amend the bill, the implication is that Tory MPs should write to Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, demanding a vote on Sunak’s leadership. Frost’s argument, which he doesn’t make explicit but which is crystal clear, is the same as John Redwood’s slogan for his doomed challenge to John Major in 1995: “No change, no chance.” Unless the Tories change leader, the plotters argue, they are doomed – with an addendum even less openly expressed: it might not make any difference, but at least we would have tried.

It is the worst plot since Peter Wright had “conversations” in the 1970s that went nowhere with another MI5 officer about getting rid of Harold Wilson.

The YouGov poll is actually more favourable to Sunak than most conventional opinion polls. It projects a Labour majority of 120, which is a little short of Tony Blair’s majority of 179 in 1997. Most attempts to convert current opinion polls into seats produce a Labour majority of 180-230. But the seat-by-seat projections dramatise the hole that the Tories are in, and will have an effect on MPs.

The next part of the plot is almost an admission of failure. The Bravermanistas and Jenrickites know that they won’t be able to amend the Rwanda bill. There aren’t enough of them, because Labour is not going to vote for amendments to defy the ECHR. Their only leverage is to vote against the entire bill at its final Commons stage, third reading, on Wednesday. They would need more than 30 Tories to vote with the opposition to defeat it. That seems unlikely – and if it became a serious threat Sunak would make the vote an issue of confidence, threatening an immediate election and that Tory MPs who voted against the government would be unable to stand as Conservatives.

So the bill is likely to go through unamended, and then we will see if there really are 53 Tory MPs who would write to Brady – the number required to trigger a leadership challenge. Spoiler: there won’t be.

But it shows how deluded and ungovernable parts of the Tory party have become that the plotting goes on. The plotters cannot even agree on who the mythical alternative leader might be that could save the party at the next election. The frontrunner to succeed Sunak is Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, and she is the only candidate who seems to be on manoeuvres – letting it be known that she warned Sunak that she didn’t think the Rwanda bill would work. But she isn’t Brexity enough for Frost and his allies either.

Redwood failed in 1995, and his challenge succeeded only in damaging the party further, portraying it as more divided. This plot will fail too, but not before it has stripped the Tories of another layer of credibility as a united, competent party of government.