Country Roads
Today we are going to ask you to put yourself in another person’s shoes. This person is a Conservative MP.
Their seat would - under normal circumstances - be considered safe(ish). On the basis of months of polls, and last night’s stunning Labour victories in Wellingborough and in Kingswood, their seat is now very much at risk. They are not yet ready to wave goodbye to the political career for which they worked so hard. They are frightened and they are angry.
The despair of this MP is enhanced, not reduced, by the twin debacles that dogged the Labour Party in the run-up to yesterday’s by-election results. Sure, they enjoyed watching Starmer dump his signature green policy. And yes, they were pleased to see him appear to dither over disciplining a candidate accused of horrible antisemitism. But then they woke up this morning and saw that neither event had triggered anything approaching a collapse in Labour’s electoral support.
Now, in the shoes of this common or garden Tory MP, what do you do?
You have been starkly reminded this week that the Labour operation remains patchy. You have been reassured that the Opposition’s policy platform is not yet coherent or clear. And you have been told, starkly, that it probably won’t make any difference to your own impending defenestration. You have also, for the first time, seen that Reform might be the dog that barks from the right after all. You can see them lapping up the blue rinsers in your own patch and it makes you nervous.
Would you not, now, be seriously tempted to roll the dice? Would you not think to yourself that perhaps, just perhaps, Keir Starmer is only succeeding because your own leader… isn’t?
The above thought process is the reason why, despite this week having been inarguably bad for Keir Starmer, it has been utterly disastrous for Rishi Sunak. His leadership depends on convincing Tory MPs like our friend here that he can narrow the gap and save at least some of their skins. The results today are hard data that he can’t - even in circumstances that lend themselves to his advantage. Even when the Labour Party is experiencing a fit of self-imposed unpleasantness they are able to produce enormous swings in notionally safe Conservative seats. If Rishi can’t make hay today then what are the chances of his doing so after months and months of continued, recession infused misery?
This is not to say that Sunak will be removed or replaced. But it is to say that the brief window of relative peace on the Tory backbenches has now slammed shut. The dysfunctional factional families will, once more, gather in committee rooms and dream up schemes. Could Kemi do better? Would we be pretty with Priti? Would a new leader be able to do a deal with Farage? Is there any way out? They almost certainly will get nowhere with these electric dreams. But they will provide both fodder for Sunday newspaper longreads and constant distractions for Sunak’s already tired and beleaguered government.
And the real problem for the Prime Minister is that they are not being wholly irrational when they spasm in this way. He is an incredibly unpopular politician. He lacks political narrative, strategy or even, really, tactics. He doesn’t connect either with his colleagues or their constituents. He is flailing and failing.
Both parties have a lot of work to do to get their houses in order and set out a coherent plan for a Britain that is cold, wet, poor and pissed off. But the bar for the Tories is higher, with the electorate, by simple virtue of their having been in power for so very long. This week has shown that crises in Labour will not alone save the Tory Party. For that reason, for the reason of a need of real impetus, many Tory MPs will conclude that there is little left to lose by openly challenging the authority of the Prime Minister. Rishi’s road to victory has always been narrow, it is today rockier than ever.