The Tories’ only hope lies in unity – MPs should be heaping pressure on Keir Starmer, not their own leader
SIR David Maxwell Fyfe, the robust Home Secretary in the early 1950s, once famously declared that “loyalty is the Tories’ secret weapon”.
His claim sounds absurd when applied to the current political scene.
Disloyalty is fast becoming the Tories’ prime characteristic.
The party’s MPs appear to be addicted to internal strife and leadership battles.
Plotting is their favourite activity, backstabbing their most regular exercise.
As authority drains away from Downing Street, the Government looks increasingly dysfunctional and divided.
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The Tories have already had three different Prime Ministers in the current Parliament and five in the past seven years.
Yet, incredibly, there seems a real possibility that there could soon be a new bid to oust Rishi Sunak, reflected in feverish speculation at Westminster that a growing number of letters of no confidence in him have been submitted to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee.
Worsening chaos
If the threshold of just 53 letters is passed, there will have to be a vote in the Parliamentary party as to whether or not he should remain as leader.
The immediate cause of the crisis engulfing No 10 is the Government’s handling of mass immigration.
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This has fed a sense of betrayal among MPs and activists who thought that Brexit would bring back control over Britain’s borders.
Instead, worsening chaos seems to prevail.
Last month, official figures revealed that the number of new arrivals settling here in the past year had gone up to a colossal 1.3million, while the annual net migration figure — which includes those leaving the country — stood at a gargantuan 745,000, easily a record.
There has also been trouble over the Prime Minister’s scheme for dealing with illegal migration by using the African republic of Rwanda as a base for processing asylum claims and accepting deportees from Britain.
The Supreme Court threw out this plan on the grounds of Rwanda’s human rights record and constitutional arrangements.
The rejection prompted a two-fold response from the Government — first, ministers promised legislation that would address the concerns of the Supreme Court, and second, a new treaty has been drawn up with Rwanda to provide assurances on human rights.
But none of this has been good enough for Sunak’s critics, as highlighted in the high drama at Westminster on Wednesday evening, when the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, sacked recently by the Prime Minister, launched a scathing attack on his government.
Her compelling performance, in which she said the Tories face “electoral oblivion” unless they get a grip on border controls, was followed by the shock resignation of Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, previously one of Sunak’s closest allies.
Warning that the Rwandan legislation represented “the triumph of hope over experience”, Jenrick argued the Prime Minister’s plan still left Britain at the mercy of cynical human rights manoeuvres.
Many in the Tory mainstream are fed up with what they feel is the self-indulgence of Sunak’s opponents.
One MP described Jenrick’s resignation as “petulant” and “treacherous”, the equivalent of “throwing the toys out of the pram”.
The Prime Minister himself tried to strike a defiant note at a Downing Street press conference yesterday, arguing that the alternative plans of the Tory rebels would do nothing to solve the problem of the illegal traffic across the Channel.
But there is no doubt that Sunak’s position is desperately vulnerable. Far behind in the polls, his party has sustained a series of record-breaking by-election defeats.
Nothing he has tried this autumn has brought any improvement in the ratings — not his address to the annual conference, nor the King’s speech, nor the Cabinet reshuffle, nor Jeremy Hunt’s pro-business autumn statement.
Moreover, his party is currently split on ideological lines in a way that has rarely happened before in recent history.
There is now a yawning chasm between the liberal Conservatives, who tend to be in the affluent south, and the supporters from the traditional working class, who generally live in the North and the Midlands, often in the former Labour “red wall” seats.
The former believe in greater European co-operation, cultural diversity, net zero emissions, smoking bans and foreign aid, whereas the latter want more rigour on immigration, crime and welfare abuses.
They put solidarity before international community, incarceration of criminals before rehabilitation.
Endless sniping
In a party that has always prided itself on pragmatism rather than dogma, the depth of this division is ominous.
Some Conservatives even worry that civil war within their ranks could be looming.
But that is precisely why, if they are to avoid the kind of meltdown that the Canadian conservatives experienced in 1993, when they collapsed from 156 seats to just two, Sunak’s MPs should drop the blue-on-blue attacks and the endless sniping at the leader.
The idea that yet another change at the top will win over the electorate is just absurd.
In fact, voters would regard such a move as further evidence that the party has finally lost all grasp of reality.
There is no hidden Churchillian figure waiting in the wings who can bring them an easy victory.
The Tories’ only hope lies in unity. That means rallying behind Sunak, backing workable policies on immigration and the economy and turning their fire on Labour.
Despite their poll lead, the opposition is weaker than it currently looks, while Sir Keir Starmer’s new pose as a Thatcherite enthusiast for business and fiscal prudence is deeply unconvincing.
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Tory MPs should be putting him, not their own leader, under remorseless pressure.
An economic revival alongside falling migration numbers could still transform the Government’s prospects.
