Oust Sunak or Tories will go extinct, warns former Cabinet ally
A leadership change is the only way to avoid handing Keir Starmer a blank cheque at the election
THE Conservatives must oust Rishi Sunak or face an electoral “massacre”, one of the Prime Minister’s former Cabinet allies says, as a poll suggests a new Tory leader could beat Sir Keir Starmer.
Sir Simon Clarke, who was Mr Sunak’s number two at the Treasury, believes “extinction is a very real possibility” for the Conservative Party if Mr Sunak leads it into this year’s general election. Writing for The Telegraph, he says that while Mr Sunak has many admirable qualities, “he does not get what Britain needs and he is not listening to what the British people want”.
A Yougov poll of 13,000 voters suggests that a new Tory leader, championing core Conservative values, could secure a convincing victory over Labour.
When people were asked who they would prefer as prime minister – Sir Keir or a new, tax-cutting Tory leader with a tougher approach to legal and illegal migration – voters in 322 constituencies in England and Wales preferred a new Tory leader, while Sir Keir came out on top in only 164 seats. In 89 constituencies, the most common answer was “not sure”. If the “not sure” respondents are stripped out, a new Tory is most popular in 375 constituencies to 200.
Downing Street believes many people have not made up their minds about who to vote for, and that a package of tax cuts in the coming months would win over the electorate.
Last week, The Telegraph reported that the same polling company put Sir Keir ahead in 483 constituencies to Mr Sunak’s 139 in a head-to-head between the two when “not sure” respondents were discounted. In an election, it predicted the Tories would lose 196 seats, leaving them with 169 MPS and giving Sir Keir a majority of 120.
The news presents a fresh headache for No10 days after Mr Sunak managed to see off a backbench rebellion against his Rwanda deportation plan, which some on the Right of his party regard as too soft.
As well as putting potential leadership rivals on the alert, the poll will provide food for thought for Tory election strategists, amid fears that the party will shed votes to Reform and the Lib Dems if it does not pursue a more traditionally Conservative agenda.
Sir Simon, who was chief secretary to the treasury when Mr Sunak was chancellor and served as levelling up secretary under Liz Truss, is the most senior Tory to call for a change of leader.
He was one of 11 Tory MPS who voted against Mr Sunak’s Rwanda Bill last week. Although the Prime Minister saw off their challenge to his authority, he will face a confidence vote from his MPS if 52 of them submit letters to the party’s 1922 Committee saying they have lost confidence in him as leader.
Sir Simon says: “The unvarnished truth is that Rishi Sunak is leading the Conservatives into an election where we will be massacred.”
The poll, which was commissioned by a group of Conservative donors called Conservative Britain Alliance, did not present respondents with names of possible alternative Tory leaders.
There has been much debate among Conservative MPS in Westminster over which election 2024 will most resemble: is this 1992, John Major’s improbable comeback, or 1997, his calamitous defeat?
To those willing to look at the polls, the answer is devastatingly obvious.
In January, The Telegraph’s Yougov MRP poll showed that were an election to be held, the Conservatives would fall from our current 350 MPS to 169, just four more seats than Sir John held in 1997.
And as several experts have pointed out, that is, if anything, optimistic. The poll assumes the gap between Labour and Tories will narrow. And takes little account of tactical voting.
Nevertheless, while bending over backwards to be fair, the poll still shows more Tory seats being lost than in 1997, the Red Wall being wiped out completely and shocking defeats in historic Tory constituencies like Chichester, Horsham and Banbury.
The unvarnished truth is that Rishi Sunak is leading the Conservatives into an election where we will be massacred.
Denial of impending catastrophe is an extraordinarily powerful human instinct.
Alan Clark, writing in 1998, the year after the Conservatives were obliterated, documented stories of
Conservative MPS in the mid-1990s not believing what they were reading in the polls on the basis of warm conversations on the doorstep.
“What defence mechanism of the psyche allowed, combined in, otherwise sensible and hard-headed men and women to induce this illusion? Every single device for measuring popular opinion was pointing consistently in the same direction.”
It is time to strip away illusion, and stop tolerating any indulgence of it. Our country, with all the challenges we face, is on the brink of being run by Labour for a decade or more.
If Nigel Farage returns to the fray, as looks increasingly likely, extinction is a very real possibility for our party.
And it is now beyond doubt that whilst the Prime Minister is far from solely responsible for our present predicament, his uninspiring leadership is the main obstacle to our recovery.
Sunak has sadly gone from asset to anchor. He lags Keir Starmer – himself no Tony Blair – by double digits on the “Best Prime Minister” metric.
He leads Keir in just 139 seats across Great Britain; he is behind in 493. His personal approval ratings have collapsed, particularly amongst the key voters we need to win back, and are now lower than Boris Johnson and even Jeremy Corbyn’s were when they resigned.
Remarkably, the Conservative party, hardly known for having a strong brand right now, outpolls Sunak in 88 per cent of constituencies – and in 98 per cent of the key seats we hold but are set to lose.
Rishi is decent to his core, fiercely intelligent and works formidably hard. But he does not get what Britain needs. And he is not listening to what the British people want.
Brexit and the 2019 general election were profound votes for change. But beyond believing we should live within our means, Rishi’s analysis of the challenges we face and change we need is far too unclear.
If there is a lodestar, it all too often seems to be deferring to the failing wisdom of the “high status” – elite international investors, lawyers, technocrats. Instead of conviction, we have convention.
Nowhere have these problems been more apparent than on immigration.
In January, I was one of the Conservative MPS who was unable to support the Safety of Rwanda Bill, precisely because I believe it is unlikely to deliver the swift and certain action that is needed to deliver our promise to stop the boats.
The British people cannot fathom why our Government is letting tens of thousands of people illegally cross the Channel every year.
Rishi seems to have sadly accepted novel, extreme and anti-democratic interpretations of international law that effectively tell the British people they cannot have a border.
The British people likewise cannot fathom why net migration has exploded. Yes, ageing Western societies can benefit from some skilled migration. But it must be controlled, and we cannot accommodate annual net migration equivalent to the size of Sheffield.
The British people are not blind. They see that Rishi only acted on legal migration when he was forced to.
Migration is sadly not the only issue these problems have reared their head on. Inflation falling is vital and welcome, but where is the radical supply side programme to jolt our economy out of the low-growth rut we and much of the West are clearly trapped in?
Where is the home building mission in the best Conservative tradition, to address soaring house prices and rents? Where is the tax reform, welfare reform, the planning reform to enable us to build the infrastructure we need? Where is the crime clampdown?
Public service reform? The protecting of our culture from the malign actors and useful idiots undermining it? Where is the story about what it means to be British today and where we should go as a nation?
Now is the time to act. For whether we deserve it or not, we still have the most monumental of opportunities: Keir Starmer.
It is telling that in a match up between Keir, Rishi and “Not sure”, the latter option routs the former two – ahead in 558 of Britain’s 632 seats.
The biggest political crisis facing developed nations is that electorates can’t get what they need and are being given what they don’t want.
This is leading to an ever greater disconnect between rulers and ruled, and has opened the door to extremists.
At the moment, having briefly recovered our position from 2019 under Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party under Rishi once again stands on the opposite, crumbling bank of this widening precipice.
If we change the leader to a prime minister who shares the instincts of the majority and is willing to lead the country in the right direction, we will recover in 2024.
Polls show just that. They are not a prediction or a forecast, but they do show that if we switch to a better leader, an overwhelming majority of constituencies would likely regard that leader as a better prime minister than Starmer by the time of the election.
I know many MPS are afraid another change of leader would look ridiculous. But what could be more ridiculous than meekly sleepwalking towards an avoidable annihilation because we were not willing to listen to what the public are telling us so clearly?
As was planned in October 2022, the contest need only take a week.
I know I will be attacked for saying this. Perhaps even accused of positioning myself or on behalf of another – emphatically neither of which I am doing. I am speaking out because the stakes for our country and my party are too high at this moment to stay silent.
Every Tory MP will need to live with the decision they make in the coming days for the rest of their lives.
We have a clear choice. Stick with Rishi Sunak, take the inevitable electoral consequences, and give the Left a blank cheque to change Britain as they see fit. Or we can change leader, and give our country and party a fighting chance.