Of all the mad things that the Conservative Party has done over the past few years, surely switching leader again just months before an
election would be the worst, wouldn’t it? A few weeks ago, almost all Conservative MPs bar a handful would have answered “yes” without hesitation. But feelings are changing in the party. The polls are now so bad that increasing numbers of MPs – including cabinet ministers – are beginning to wonder if continuing on the current course is really the least worst option. Over the weekend, Penny Mordaunt was reported to be the new Prime Minister of choice for a cabal of MPs plotting to unseat Rishi Sunak . Mordaunt hasn’t commented on it , and David Davis, who backed her in the 2022 leadership race, called it “completely bonkers at all levels”. But the shift in sentiment among MPs is one of the main reasons the renewed Mordaunt chatter doesn’t sound quite as barmy as other bursts of excitement have recently. If you are a Tory MP who thinks the party is sinking ever deeper in the polls because this is what happens after such a long and tumultuous period in government, then you’d be inclined to think any change of leader would be like trying to run out of quicksand and would only pull the party down further. If, however, you are one of the increasing number of MPs who is starting to wonder if Rishi Sunak himself is one of the dead weights causing that sinking feeling, then would a change of leader really be the worst thing to do? That question has so much more purchase than it did a few months ago. Sunak has indeed exacerbated a number of problems himself: he has been weirdly slow to react to what should be quite straightforward questions about racist donors, and beyond ‘doing things properly and having a plan’, many of his own allies still struggle to articulate what Project Rishi actually stands for . Read Next May
elections will be 'major test' for Sunak, PM warned as he battles Tory plots Sunak himself has shifted campaigning position so many times that he is carrying out his own regular change of leadership internally. Since the autumn, he has had more software updates than an
iPhone, each promising a new, exciting interface and each turning out to have significant bugs that need fixing. He is clearly anxious, too, given his allies have been briefing that he would sooner call an election than be forced out by his colleagues. It’s not clear whether this is any smarter than any of the other Rishi relaunches, though. At around 24 per cent, and hovering roughly 20 points behind
Labour, why would you wait until his preferred date of the autumn? Calling rebels’ bluffs only works when you know the thing you’re threatening is worse than the status quo. Chatter about Mordaunt holding meetings started to circulate in Conservative groups towards the end of last week. Not all of those who have been written up as backing Mordaunt say privately that they are really in her camp, but what they do say is that the situation in the party is dire. The MPs who a few months ago were still saying the Prime Minister needed to change course have now switched to saying they can’t see how he personally can, but that the party really does need to. The Tory
WhatsApp groups, which have the benefit of exciting more interest from journalists than staid old press releases, were flooded on Monday morning by a group of around 20 loyalists insisting that the main problem for the party is appearing divided. Others disagree. “I agree that being disunited is a problem, but I’d say it’s number five on the list of problems we have, and is a symptom, not the problem itself,” retorts one Sunak opponent. Mordaunt’s own allies think she is being briefed out either by the right of the party or by Downing Street itself in an attempt to undermine her own prospects personally. The benefit for the right-wing rebels would also be that in talking up Mordaunt, they are also increasing the chatter about a leadership contest to the benefit of their preferred candidate: they can create the momentum to remove Sunak without being the one who wields the knife. Of course, there is no one preferred candidate, though one of the rebels argues to me that “they don’t need to be the same question answered at the same time: we could answer the question of should we get rid of Rishi and then move onto the one about who replaces him”. Few traditional Tories would actually want Mordaunt as leader: her views on sex and gender, for instance, are anathema to many MPs on this wing of the party, who now see trans rights as almost totemic – hence Liz Truss’s doomed attempt to introduce a backbench bill banning transgender
Women from female-only spaces and women’s sports. Kemi Badenoch this week insisted that there was too much “self-indulgent” leadership speculation – but of course she too has been the subject of constant questions about her own ambitions. She has made clear to the most organised plotters who are operating out of West End offices that she is not their woman. Those organised plotters, though, want to force a leadership contest as soon as possible: Badenoch rejecting them at this stage doesn’t mean she wouldn’t stand if a contest was forced upon her. The crucial date for the plotters now is the 2 May local elections, but some suggest a move against Sunak might come sooner than that. The bulk of the party isn’t yet in favour of this happening, but what has changed in the past few weeks is that more MPs are now unsure of what would be more mad: to change leader, or to keep the one they have.