When a political campaign that has recently lost an election throws a thank you event for its supporters, you might expect the atmosphere to be flat.
That was not the case when backers of Rishi Sunak gathered at a central London hotel on Thursday night to sip English sparkling wine. Sources report that the mood was “upbeat” and the idea of sharing commiserations far from people’s minds.
It is not difficult to see why – allies of Mr Sunak believe their man could be in 10 Downing Street within months if a sufficient mass of Tory MPs can persuade the 1922 Committee to tell Ms Truss that her time is up.
Sunak supporters were feeling optimistic even before the events of Friday, when Liz Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, replaced him with Jeremy Hunt and ditched her flagship policy not to raise corporation tax.
They believe Mr Sunak has been vindicated by the fallout from the mini-Budget. One MP who supported him in the leadership race said: “Everything he said has come to pass.” Another said that his unheeded warnings about the economic danger Ms Truss was heading towards was “Churchillian”.
Conservatives have had to reach far back into history to find appropriate metaphors for what happened on Friday. Yesterday, one senior Tory MP compared the embattled Prime Minister to Aethelred the Unready, saying she had been forced to give “Danegeld to the moderate wing of the party in the form of Jeremy Hunt”.
Another said: “Number 10 have played a card because they’re desperate.”
The view among ardent Sunak supporters is that while Ms Truss may have bought herself some time, “things are too far gone” now for her to survive.
One former minister said that there was a mood of “despair” on the Conservative benches, describing Ms Truss’s performance in her eight-minute press conference on Friday as “abysmal”.
When another MP was asked for their reaction to the day’s events, they simply replied with the message: “I’ve put my letter in.” Other MPs are understood to have sent letters of no confidence to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Supporters of Mr Sunak have welcomed the arrival of Mr Hunt in the Treasury – after crashing out of the first round of the leadership race, he had backed their candidate.
However, they insist that the appointment fails to resolve serious problems.
The first they point to is a fundamental lack of alignment between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Even more serious is the electoral mountain facing the Tories, with polls currently showing the party 20 to 30 points behind Labour.
A former minister said that the appointment of Mr Hunt “doesn’t solve the electoral problem”. “General elections are not won or lost on the performance of the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor,” they said.
“What we’re talking about here is damage limitation. My fantasy at the moment is that we can deny Labour an outright majority.
“The party has to make the choice: do you cut out this desperate period of our history now fully by finding a way of removing her; or do we limp on?
“If she struggles on we are going to get slaughtered.”
A senior Tory reported how walking through their town centre on Saturday morning, the same unprompted word kept on coming up in conversations with constituents: “Shambles, shambles, shambles.”
That electoral threat is focusing minds. One Tory MP said there were discussions about building support for a single candidate and then putting pressure on the 1922 Committee to make clear that Ms Truss’s position was untenable.
“The only way it will work is a papal conclave where all the different clans of the party realise that we’re facing complete and utter annihilation and they all get together in a room,” they said.
The hope is that the 1922 Committee or a group of Tory grandees would then be persuaded to intervene by representations from these MPs or the sheer volume of no-confidence letters being received.
“Then the men in grey suits go and tell her the party clans have decided who it’s going to be,” the MP said.
Given the economic instability threatening the UK, party members would have to be cut out from the process. A former minister agreed: “It’s got to be a coronation.”
While Ms Truss is supposed to be protected from a leadership challenge for her first year, her opponents believe such niceties can be circumvented.
The former minister added: “We all know that we have to suspend the rules.
“I just hope that the Graham Bradys of this world come to terms with that.”
Another former minister said: “If the 1922 [Committee] wants to do this it can”.
While Mr Hunt’s arrival was supposed to shore up the Prime Minister, Sunak supporters think he could remain Chancellor. Even before Hunt was appointed, he was being mooted as part of a “joint ticket” with Mr Sunak and Penny Mordaunt as foreign secretary.
However, huge obstacles remain. Allies of Mr Sunak are adamant that he is not plotting, knowing that such a perception could be fatal. “He’s incredibly careful,” one said.
Truss loyalists insist they will not row in behind a new leader. One minister said: “The idea that Rishi and Penny can unite the party either as a duo or individuals is for the birds. The party membership rejected Rishi.” Supporters of Boris Johnson would also likely make things difficult.
Some Tory MPs are sceptical that their fractious party can unite behind anyone. A member of the 2019 cohort said it was unrealistic that politicians would set aside their ambitions because “egos are rife”. There is speculation that now Mr Hunt has made a comeback he may fancy the job of “caretaker prime minister” himself.
There is also distrust about the activities of figures such as Michael Gove. So far, he has limited his public statements to calls for Ms Truss to revise the mini-Budget, but the suspicion is that this could be a cover. A minister said: “The big question is, is it [an] active war against her? I think they are deliberately waging war on her with the intention of gaining power themselves.”
Asked on Saturday if Ms Truss would be able to remain, Mr Gove said: “The two points that Jeremy [Hunt] made this morning are correct – people need a period of stability and the Conservative Party will be judged at the next general election.”
There is undoubtedly a group of MPs who believe that the party cannot endure further trauma and that Ms Truss needs more time. One former minister said there was a “massive challenge with trying to persuade people that you don’t need a general election if you’re on your fifth leader”, which was why “I’m not one of the people who’s going to be calling for her head”.
Those close to Ms Truss say she is focused on getting on with the job. A Downing Street source said: “The people who plotted against one PM are now trying to get rid of another.
“They do not care about our economic prosperity or the fate of the markets or the situation in Ukraine.
“They know who they are. The world should know who they are.”
Some Sunak supporters wish that Ms Truss would have an “Estelle Morris moment” by admitting she is not up to the task and leaving quietly, although there is little confidence it will happen.
One MP said: “What this Prime Minister and her departed chancellor and so many in her government lack is self-awareness: awareness of the gaping gap between how they would like to be and how in reality they are.”
The new captain of the Titanic. Sunak will at most be Prime Minister for less than 2 years. The closest the article comes to addressing this problem is here,
>A former minister said that the appointment of Mr Hunt “doesn’t solve the electoral problem”. “General elections are not won or lost on the performance of the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor,” they said.
>“What we’re talking about here is damage limitation. My fantasy at the moment is that we can deny Labour an outright majority.
They think they have a inate right to govern, does he really believe the British voter will see him in a different light. Tory members and MPs voted for Truss and were cheering her only a few weeks ago. Many were arguing that she did nothing wrong up to the day before her U-Turns. This isn’t just about Truss its about the whole party.
I don’t think he’ll be PM. There are still many Johnson supporters that remember how Sunak betrayed Boris – I can’t see him getting the support. We saw that in the last leadership contest.
If Sunak wants the PM role, let him fight it in a GE. Which he would, of course, lose because the Tories are a failed party at this point.
See, in a true democracy, the governing party would have to earn their mandate again after collapsing this many times.
If Sunak is made PM his tax scandals will be brought back into the news.
Sunak’s wife avoided tens of millions of pounds of tax in the UK using non domiciled status. Rishi had permanent residence in the US while chancellor and filed US tax returns as a non resident.
The Conservative membership had a choice between two bad candidates. If Sunak becomes PM the party will show that their best offer of a leader during an economic crisis is a tax avoiding multi millionaire.
If Sunak becomes Prime Minister, the UK will then get a very damaging trade deal with India. Questions really need to asked, and answered, as to where Richy’s business interests lie in his £750m personal portfolio and whose interests that trade deal would represent – his family’s or the UK’s.
Won’t this send a message to the Tory membership: it doesn’t matter who you vote for, we’ll just keep running the vote till we get what we want…
I would much rather Starmer was at the helm. But if we have to have another from the ragtag bunch of Tory loons steering HMS UK, then Sunak isn’t a bad choice. He knew, and was very vocal about, Trussies daft plans potentially sinking the UK economy.
This country and the people in it are so weak they will just accept it. And will probably cup the balls while they take it too.
Fucking joke we’ve become.
Rats fighting in a sack… Just give us a GE you scumbags.
I’m quite worried about this, Sunak is competent, well connected and ambitious. If he gets the post there’s a real danger he’ll manage to get the wool pulled over the public’s eyes again.
Definitely not an opponent to underestimate, the best strategic option for labour is to try and keep Liz in power until the next GE
The guy who literally done the bare minimum and gave a couple of pence off a liter of fuel when prices started to go bonkers?
Sickening that anyone can be happy with the current state of affairs. Further proof, if needed, that Tories are sociopaths.
15 comments
When a political campaign that has recently lost an election throws a thank you event for its supporters, you might expect the atmosphere to be flat.
That was not the case when backers of Rishi Sunak gathered at a central London hotel on Thursday night to sip English sparkling wine. Sources report that the mood was “upbeat” and the idea of sharing commiserations far from people’s minds.
It is not difficult to see why – allies of Mr Sunak believe their man could be in 10 Downing Street within months if a sufficient mass of Tory MPs can persuade the 1922 Committee to tell Ms Truss that her time is up.
Sunak supporters were feeling optimistic even before the events of Friday, when Liz Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, replaced him with Jeremy Hunt and ditched her flagship policy not to raise corporation tax.
They believe Mr Sunak has been vindicated by the fallout from the mini-Budget. One MP who supported him in the leadership race said: “Everything he said has come to pass.” Another said that his unheeded warnings about the economic danger Ms Truss was heading towards was “Churchillian”.
Conservatives have had to reach far back into history to find appropriate metaphors for what happened on Friday. Yesterday, one senior Tory MP compared the embattled Prime Minister to Aethelred the Unready, saying she had been forced to give “Danegeld to the moderate wing of the party in the form of Jeremy Hunt”.
Another said: “Number 10 have played a card because they’re desperate.”
The view among ardent Sunak supporters is that while Ms Truss may have bought herself some time, “things are too far gone” now for her to survive.
One former minister said that there was a mood of “despair” on the Conservative benches, describing Ms Truss’s performance in her eight-minute press conference on Friday as “abysmal”.
When another MP was asked for their reaction to the day’s events, they simply replied with the message: “I’ve put my letter in.” Other MPs are understood to have sent letters of no confidence to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Supporters of Mr Sunak have welcomed the arrival of Mr Hunt in the Treasury – after crashing out of the first round of the leadership race, he had backed their candidate.
However, they insist that the appointment fails to resolve serious problems.
The first they point to is a fundamental lack of alignment between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Even more serious is the electoral mountain facing the Tories, with polls currently showing the party 20 to 30 points behind Labour.
A former minister said that the appointment of Mr Hunt “doesn’t solve the electoral problem”. “General elections are not won or lost on the performance of the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor,” they said.
“What we’re talking about here is damage limitation. My fantasy at the moment is that we can deny Labour an outright majority.
“The party has to make the choice: do you cut out this desperate period of our history now fully by finding a way of removing her; or do we limp on?
“If she struggles on we are going to get slaughtered.”
A senior Tory reported how walking through their town centre on Saturday morning, the same unprompted word kept on coming up in conversations with constituents: “Shambles, shambles, shambles.”
That electoral threat is focusing minds. One Tory MP said there were discussions about building support for a single candidate and then putting pressure on the 1922 Committee to make clear that Ms Truss’s position was untenable.
“The only way it will work is a papal conclave where all the different clans of the party realise that we’re facing complete and utter annihilation and they all get together in a room,” they said.
The hope is that the 1922 Committee or a group of Tory grandees would then be persuaded to intervene by representations from these MPs or the sheer volume of no-confidence letters being received.
“Then the men in grey suits go and tell her the party clans have decided who it’s going to be,” the MP said.
Given the economic instability threatening the UK, party members would have to be cut out from the process. A former minister agreed: “It’s got to be a coronation.”
While Ms Truss is supposed to be protected from a leadership challenge for her first year, her opponents believe such niceties can be circumvented.
The former minister added: “We all know that we have to suspend the rules.
“I just hope that the Graham Bradys of this world come to terms with that.”
Another former minister said: “If the 1922 [Committee] wants to do this it can”.
While Mr Hunt’s arrival was supposed to shore up the Prime Minister, Sunak supporters think he could remain Chancellor. Even before Hunt was appointed, he was being mooted as part of a “joint ticket” with Mr Sunak and Penny Mordaunt as foreign secretary.
However, huge obstacles remain. Allies of Mr Sunak are adamant that he is not plotting, knowing that such a perception could be fatal. “He’s incredibly careful,” one said.
Truss loyalists insist they will not row in behind a new leader. One minister said: “The idea that Rishi and Penny can unite the party either as a duo or individuals is for the birds. The party membership rejected Rishi.” Supporters of Boris Johnson would also likely make things difficult.
Some Tory MPs are sceptical that their fractious party can unite behind anyone. A member of the 2019 cohort said it was unrealistic that politicians would set aside their ambitions because “egos are rife”. There is speculation that now Mr Hunt has made a comeback he may fancy the job of “caretaker prime minister” himself.
There is also distrust about the activities of figures such as Michael Gove. So far, he has limited his public statements to calls for Ms Truss to revise the mini-Budget, but the suspicion is that this could be a cover. A minister said: “The big question is, is it [an] active war against her? I think they are deliberately waging war on her with the intention of gaining power themselves.”
Asked on Saturday if Ms Truss would be able to remain, Mr Gove said: “The two points that Jeremy [Hunt] made this morning are correct – people need a period of stability and the Conservative Party will be judged at the next general election.”
There is undoubtedly a group of MPs who believe that the party cannot endure further trauma and that Ms Truss needs more time. One former minister said there was a “massive challenge with trying to persuade people that you don’t need a general election if you’re on your fifth leader”, which was why “I’m not one of the people who’s going to be calling for her head”.
Those close to Ms Truss say she is focused on getting on with the job. A Downing Street source said: “The people who plotted against one PM are now trying to get rid of another.
“They do not care about our economic prosperity or the fate of the markets or the situation in Ukraine.
“They know who they are. The world should know who they are.”
Some Sunak supporters wish that Ms Truss would have an “Estelle Morris moment” by admitting she is not up to the task and leaving quietly, although there is little confidence it will happen.
One MP said: “What this Prime Minister and her departed chancellor and so many in her government lack is self-awareness: awareness of the gaping gap between how they would like to be and how in reality they are.”
The new captain of the Titanic. Sunak will at most be Prime Minister for less than 2 years. The closest the article comes to addressing this problem is here,
>A former minister said that the appointment of Mr Hunt “doesn’t solve the electoral problem”. “General elections are not won or lost on the performance of the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor,” they said.
>“What we’re talking about here is damage limitation. My fantasy at the moment is that we can deny Labour an outright majority.
They think they have a inate right to govern, does he really believe the British voter will see him in a different light. Tory members and MPs voted for Truss and were cheering her only a few weeks ago. Many were arguing that she did nothing wrong up to the day before her U-Turns. This isn’t just about Truss its about the whole party.
I don’t think he’ll be PM. There are still many Johnson supporters that remember how Sunak betrayed Boris – I can’t see him getting the support. We saw that in the last leadership contest.
If Sunak wants the PM role, let him fight it in a GE. Which he would, of course, lose because the Tories are a failed party at this point.
See, in a true democracy, the governing party would have to earn their mandate again after collapsing this many times.
If Sunak is made PM his tax scandals will be brought back into the news.
Sunak’s wife avoided tens of millions of pounds of tax in the UK using non domiciled status. Rishi had permanent residence in the US while chancellor and filed US tax returns as a non resident.
The Conservative membership had a choice between two bad candidates. If Sunak becomes PM the party will show that their best offer of a leader during an economic crisis is a tax avoiding multi millionaire.
If Sunak becomes Prime Minister, the UK will then get a very damaging trade deal with India. Questions really need to asked, and answered, as to where Richy’s business interests lie in his £750m personal portfolio and whose interests that trade deal would represent – his family’s or the UK’s.
Won’t this send a message to the Tory membership: it doesn’t matter who you vote for, we’ll just keep running the vote till we get what we want…
I would much rather Starmer was at the helm. But if we have to have another from the ragtag bunch of Tory loons steering HMS UK, then Sunak isn’t a bad choice. He knew, and was very vocal about, Trussies daft plans potentially sinking the UK economy.
This country and the people in it are so weak they will just accept it. And will probably cup the balls while they take it too.
Fucking joke we’ve become.
Rats fighting in a sack… Just give us a GE you scumbags.
I’m quite worried about this, Sunak is competent, well connected and ambitious. If he gets the post there’s a real danger he’ll manage to get the wool pulled over the public’s eyes again.
Definitely not an opponent to underestimate, the best strategic option for labour is to try and keep Liz in power until the next GE
The guy who literally done the bare minimum and gave a couple of pence off a liter of fuel when prices started to go bonkers?
Sickening that anyone can be happy with the current state of affairs. Further proof, if needed, that Tories are sociopaths.