Sunak and Johnson hold 11th hour talks
Fears of historic Tory split if leadership frontrunners cannot agree a joint ticket
BORIS JOHNSON and Rishi Sunak were being urged to strike a deal to avoid a Conservative civil war last night, amid fears that the party is on course for a historic split.
The former prime minister and his ex-chancellor held talks about agreeing to a joint ticket, as Mr Johnson’s allies claimed that he had joined Mr Sunak in reaching the threshold of 100 MP supporters needed to move to the next stage of the leadership contest.
Yesterday Mr Johnson flew into London from the Caribbean as Priti Patel, the former home secretary, joined prominent MPs on the Right of the party, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Bill Cash, in backing him.
But Kemi Badenoch, the Trade Secretary, Lord Frost, the former Cabinet Office minister, and David Davis, the exBrexit secretary, all declared their support for Mr Sunak.
Senior figures in the party fear that a sizeable number of MPs on both sides would refuse to accept the leadership of a rival candidate.
One senior MP said: “Rishi and Boris both have to concede something and recognise their strengths. Rishi has no real mandate from the electorate and may not from MPs. Crossing the threshold is not the same as support.
“Boris needs to recognise that he is as divisive and must try and bring Penny and Rishi together.”
Meanwhile, Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the Commons, whose own campaign appeared to lose momentum yesterday, used an article in this newspaper to warn: “How we arrived at this point is understandable – the divisions of Brexit, the difficult decisions taken in the pandemic, successive leadership elections and so on. Understandable, yes. Acceptable, no.
“It’s just not acceptable because our abiding mission should be the country, not the Conservative Party.
“It has been until recently. It’s not acceptable that we would now risk losing an election because we couldn’t work together.
“Even more so just at the point when we need to consolidate everything we’ve worked for over the last decade. In the past 12 years we’ve made this country infinitely better.”
Ms Mordaunt’s article made no mention of her own bid, suggesting she was preparing to strike a deal.
However, one former Cabinet minister said it was too late even for a pact to stop a split in the party.
The MP said: “Unity is the most important goal right now.
“But I am pessimistic about whether it can be achieved. I suspect the party is too divided, with too much bad blood circulating over the last few years, to survive six to nine months, whoever wins the contest.”
Growing fears of a split in the party prompted the two frontrunners to arrange private talks yesterday on a potential joint ticket.
Last night there were claims that Mr Johnson had delayed the meeting as his allies tried to narrow the gap between the 55 public endorsements he had received, compared with Mr Sunak’s 118.
The Sunday Telegraph was told that by yesterday afternoon, supporters of Mr Johnson were lobbying declared supporters of Mr Sunak and Ms Mordaunt, in a move seen by his opponents as a sign that he was struggling to win sufficient backing to demonstrate that he could unite the party.
A poll for this newspaper found that a majority of Tory voters think the party made the wrong decision by forcing Boris Johnson out.
According to the survey by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, 57 per cent of ‘You can see Changing of the Guard in the morning and Changing of the PM most afternoons’ those who voted for the Conservatives in 2019 believe that it was the wrong move to get rid of Mr Johnson in the summer.
Two thirds of them now believe he can make a political comeback, up from just 43 per cent who thought so at the start of last month.
In a separate survey measuring the views of 241 Tory councillors, Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson were neck and neck.
On a straight choice between the pair, 48 per cent prefer Mr Sunak and 45 per cent Mr Johnson.
Chris Hopkins, director of Savanta ComRes, said that the poll showed there was “barely a cigarette paper between Sunak and Johnson” among Tory councillors.
“Sunak is, possibly, a nose ahead, able to retain more of his vote among councillors a few months ago than Johnson takes directly from Truss,” he said.
Mr Hopkins added that the rest of the 170,000-strong membership were
“more likely to vote for Johnson than the councillors in this poll”.
“Sunak’s most narrow of leads here doesn’t give me much confidence that he’d be ahead at all among the wider membership,” he added.
Yesterday Ms Patel said Mr Johnson had “the mandate to deliver our elected manifesto and a proven track record getting the big decisions right”.
She added that he would be able to “bring together a united team” to “lead Britain to a stronger and more prosperous future”. Ms Patel adds to significant support for Mr Johnson among the Right of the party. However, Mr Sunak was making inroads yesterday, with endorsements from figures including Mrs Badenoch, Sir Desmond Swayne and Tom Hunt, a 2019-intake MP.
Mrs Badenoch, an increasingly influential figure who had criticised economic policies such as Mr Sunak’s council tax rebate for energy bills in the last leadership contest, spent two days considering her own leadership bid but concluded she was unable to meet the threshold of 100 MPs.
She said: “I’m a big fan of Boris and he got the party through a very difficult situation in 2019. We are now in a different political climate that requires a different approach.”
An ally of Mr Sunak claimed that Mr Johnson should agree to take up his former role of foreign secretary in the interests of party unity, adding: “He’s got an international reputation now. He can pursue Ukraine and causes that he genuinely cares about. And if Rishi were PM his capacity to do things internationally would be limited because there are so many domestic challenges.
“You could see an argument for having a figure like Boris on the international stage if they could work together.”
KEMI BADENOCH last night backed Rishi Sunak to be the next prime minister in a major boost to his campaign to enter No10.
The Trade Secretary – who is an influential figure on the Right of the party and with the Tory membership – delivered her coveted endorsement to the former chancellor. She told Telegraph: “I’m a big fan of Boris and he got the party through a very difficult situation in 2019. We are now in a different political climate that requires a different approach.”
The endorsement came as Boris Johnson and Mr Sunak continued to battle it out for the support of the Brexiteer wing of the Tory party.
Earlier in the day, Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary, announced she was backing Mr Johnson to return as prime minister.
Ms Patel said that her former boss had “the mandate to deliver our elected manifesto and a track record of getting the big decisions right”.
She added Mr Johnson would be able to “bring together a united team” to “lead Britain to a stronger and more prosperous future”.
Mr Johnson’s other endorsements on the Right include Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Transport Secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary. Outside of the Cabinet, he is being backed by Nadine Dorries,
‘[Johnson] has the mandate to deliver our manifesto and a track record of getting big decisions right’
Marco Longhi, Andrea Jenkyns and David Morris. Veteran MP Sir Christopher Chope said he would get his support because “[I] didn’t want to get rid of him in the first place”.
Mr Sunak also received a string of Right-wing MPs’ endorsements, including David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, who backed Penny Mordaunt in the last contest, Tom Hunt and Tim Loughton, as well as former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost.
Lord Frost, who worked for Mr Johnson in the Foreign Office before being appointed to sit in his Cabinet, is, like Ms Badenoch, one of the former chancellor’s most prized endorsements on the Right of the party. In what is likely to be a personal blow to the former PM, Lord Frost said Mr Johnson would always be “a hero for delivering Brexit” but the party needed to move on.
“It is simply not right to risk repeating the chaos and confusion of the last year,” he tweeted. “The Tory party must get behind a capable leader who can deliver a Conservative programme. That is Rishi Sunak.”
Lord Frost backed Liz Truss during the last race, saying he was dissuaded from backing Mr Sunak because he was “the candidate of continuity with traditional economic management”.
Mr Johnson has been less successful in securing public nominations from those on the centre and Left of the party.
Greg Hands, the Trade Minister, said he would struggle to form a government.“I like Boris, but bringing him back would be retrograde,” he tweeted. “What finally finished Boris wasn’t the ‘parties’ or even the Privileges Committee – it was that he wasn’t able to form a government.
“Sixty-eight members of the Government had resigned in 24 hours – and more were coming. How could any of those 68 serve, just weeks after?”
Mr Hands revealed that on July 6, Mr Johnson “offered me Northern Ireland Secretary”. “I think he would have offered me almost anything,” he said.
He added: “Being elected the leader of the largest party in Parliament, but without being able to form a stable government… could lead to constitutional crisis and an early general election in chaotic circumstances.”
The Sunday Telegraph understands the European Research Group of Tory MPs is to hold a mass meeting tomorrow to decide which candidate to back.
There are concerns among Rightwing MPs that the failure of Liz Truss’s premiership could feed a backlash against anyone standing on the Right.
One said: “There’s real uncertainty about whether the membership says, ‘The Right had a go and failed.’ There are arguments that is how the general public will see it. It may be members say, ‘Rishi is the one that we need.’”
‘I like Boris but bringing him back would be retrograde. What finished him was not being able to form a government’