The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Come back Boris... but is all forgiven at the top of the Tory party?
As Sunak struggles to keep up in the polls, the Conservatives’ thoughts return to a proven winner
Amid the jubilation and backslapping in Downing Street on Thursday when Labour finally ditched its £28billion green investment pledge, one person present reached for a literary reference.
For Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary and a veteran of recent Tory election battles, Sir Keir Starmer’s slow-motion flip-flop had echoes of dialogue once penned by Ernest Hemingway.
“How did you go bankrupt?” one character asks another in Hemingway’s 1926 classic The Sun Also
Rises. “Two ways,” comes the droll response. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
For more than a year, the Conservatives have been chipping away at the flagship Labour green promise, a deliberate and dogged political attack. And then, suddenly, it was gone.
Sir Keir’s mother-of-all U-turns was delivered behind closed doors, the Labour leader briefing reporters off camera, with Rachel Reeves, his shadow chancellor, in Parliament on Thursday morning.
But it was no less significant because of that. Gone was the original 2021 policy to borrow an extra £28billion a year to achieve “clean energy” by 2030, replaced with just £4.7billion a year.
In a tussle that placed the trade unions and Ed Miliband, the shadow net zero secretary, on one side and Ms Reeves, defender of the fiscal rules, on the other, the latter won out.
Mr Miliband stayed in post and eventually backed the policy through a factual message on social media, but Tory glee was apparent. “Tis but a flesh wound,” wrote Mr Gove as he shared Mr Miliband’s tweet.
The political damage, as Tory
‘Labour have never dealt with this level of scrutiny before. They’re not handling it well’
strategists see it, is twofold. First, gone is the money but the policies to bring about clean energy by 2030 remain.
Treasury officials who were ordered by their Tory special advisers to cost up a pledge to insulate 19 million homes this week will now be turning their attention on other Labour green policies.
“I feel sorry for them,” said one
Tory involved in the planning of the attacks on Labour. “They’ve never dealt with this level of scrutiny and pressure before. They’re not handling it very well.”
But the second, wider point is that Sir Keir’s reversal fits into the exact narrative the Tories are projecting – that he does not have a credible plan for power and cannot be trusted.
That framing was devised by Isaac Levido, the Aussie strategist given the keys once again to the Tory campaign machine after masterminding the 2019 “get Brexit done” election win.
It is predicated on the hope that, pen hovering over the ballot paper, voters will be filled with doubt about what a Starmer premiership would really do, and decide instead it is better the devil you know.
The Tories’ top-line “our plan is working” message rolled out this year will be carried through into the Spring Budget, when a fresh wave of tax cuts will build on Autumn’s National Insurance reduction.
A measured approach means an eye-catching abolition of inheritance tax has been ruled out for the spring amid fears it would be viewed as a bung to rich Tory voters.
A reduction in income tax rates is now the front-runner, according to one Downing Street insider in the know, given the National Insurance cut in November failed to move the opinion polls.
However, the volume of Conservative crowing at Sir Keir’s switch in position distracted what even those supportive of the Prime Minister admitted were two unforced errors this week.
Why Mr Sunak decided to grasp the outstretched hand of Piers Morgan when offered a £1,000 bet that a Rwanda deportation flight will get off before the election still has some in No10 perplexed.
The later mop-up operation, which saw the Prime Minister insist he was not much of a betting man, only for a recording of him eagerly discussing spread betting on the cricket to swiftly surface, compounded the problem.
And then there was Mr Sunak’s jokey comment about Sir Keir’s past remark that “99.9 per cent” of women do not have a penis, a reference dropped into Prime Minister’s Questions despite having just been told the mother of murdered Brianna Ghey was watching on.
The line was pre-written, placed into a list of the Labour leader’s about-turns due to be deployed when challenged on the Rwanda bet. Some Tory MPs privately blamed the misstep on Mr Sunak’s weakness in thinking on his feet politically.
The Prime Minister has declined to apologise, doubling down on the attack line instead.
There could be worse around the corner for Downing Street. Next week three days are metaphorically circled in red, the danger of a damaging triple whammy looming large.
On Wednesday, inflation figures for the year to January are released. Treasury estimates suggest it will be around 4.4 per cent – which, critically, is higher than the previous month. A £100 rise in the energy price cap kicking in that month will be blamed.
If that setback to one of the Prime Minister’s five priority areas – getting inflation down – is not enough, then another – growing the economy – could face a hammer blow on Thursday.
That morning, the public will learn if Britain is in a technical recession when the growth figure for the fourth quarter of 2023 is released. There was a small contraction in the third quarter.
“It is on a knife edge”, said one Whitehall insider across the stats. The Prime Minister struggled in his Piers Morgan interview to articulate exactly how he would explain recession away, given his focus on growth.
And then, in the early hours of Friday morning, could land the declaration of double by-election defeat for the Tories, once again forcing questions about Mr Sunak’s electability into the spotlight.
That Tory whips have not issued the usual orders for MPs to campaign at least three times in by-elections – in this case for the Tory-held Kingswood and Wellingborough seats – is a sign of pessimism.
“It is extraordinary,” said one Conservative MP. “One can only assume that they’ve written it off.” No10 insiders suggest just that, privately predicting a pair of losses.
The Tory plotters angling for the Prime Minister’s ousting are not expecting new MPs to repeat Sir Simon Clarke’s public resignation call after the by-elections. The wake of expected heavy losses in the May local elections is seen as the real danger point.
But they remain disillusioned. “It is not working. Every week that goes by highlights that,” says one who wants Mr Sunak gone.
“The problem for the PM is that he is out of touch, rich and people don’t like him.” Expect such criticisms to be aired, on or off the record, in the days after the by-elections.
The hat-trick nightmare may, of course, not come true. The economy may be growing, just. A by-election miracle could yet happen. But still the polling reality hangs over the party – a Labour lead of 20 points, with the election expected in October or November.
And so those planning the Tory campaign have found their thoughts turning to two proven winners, the only Conservatives to have won a Commons majority this century: Lord Cameron and Boris Johnson.
Both men are being lined up for prominent roles in the coming general election.
The Foreign Secretary’s situation is more straightforward. A return to the front bench has seen Lord Cameron become a public advocate of Mr Sunak. The former Tory leader, a political pro, is judged to still appeal to centrist voters.
With Mr Johnson it is trickier. He is being earmarked for a role that would take the fight to Sir Keir in some high profile campaign “moments”.
“He is an exceptional campaigner”, said one Tory.
And yet, has Boris really forgiven all? Is the man who blames his ousting on Mr Sunak more than any other individual – including himself – prepared to put his shoulder to the
‘They are not talking. The PM does not pick up the phone’
re-election wheel? Mr Sunak’s headline-making comment this week that he talked to Mr Johnson before Christmas and would not rule out a Cabinet return has, it appears, glossed up the real state of their relationship.
Except for a brief hello at a Remembrance Sunday event last November, Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak are said to have not had a conversation in the past four months.
“They are not talking”, said one Boris friend. “The PM does not pick up the phone.”
However, channels between Mr Johnson and the Sunak inner circle have been opened in recent weeks. And even the same Boris friend predicted the former prime minister will say yes to trying to get the Tories re-elected.
Sir Keir’s green investment reversal raises the chances that other policies could yet change. As one Labour shadow cabinet minister puts it, the greatest risk to their victory is that “we f--- it up”.
After a week in which the Tories finally won their £28billion war, Mr Sunak will be gunning for more forced U-turns – if he can keep the fire directed away from his foot.