Rishi Sunak back in top spot after losses, but his ouster is unlikely
Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could find himself in a familiar situation after his Conservative Party suffered defeat in Thursday's parliamentary elections in two districts: isolated, contested and the subject of whispered plots by restive Tories bent on pushing him out to push for a new election. leader.
The crushing loss of two seats in once reliably Conservative areas meant another bleak week for Sunak. Economic data confirmed on Thursday that Britain had entered a recession late last year, undermining one of the prime minister's five key promises: that he would replenish the country's growth.
Yet the plans against Mr Sunak are no more likely to go anywhere, analysts say, than during his previous leadership crises. However desperate the Conservatives' political situation, they would find it difficult to replace their fading Prime Minister with anyone else at this late stage.
With the party divided between centrists and the right, and a general election looming within months, the conditions for an internal party coup – of the kind that ousted the last two Conservative leaders, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – are growing. according to analysts, it is becoming more difficult by the day.
Mr Sunak could still be purged, as could Mr Johnson and Ms Truss. But his more likely fate, these analysts said, is that he will be swept from office by the opposition Labor party, which convincingly won the two seats on Thursday and has been leading the Conservatives by double-digit margins in national polls for more than a year leads.
“I wouldn't completely dismiss the idea that he could be gone by the end of the month, but it seems very unlikely to me,” Timothy Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said of Mr. Sunak. . “I think most Tory Members of Parliament are still convinced that would make them look ridiculous.”
Support for the Conservatives never recovered from Ms Truss' disastrous 44 days as prime minister, which ended with her resignation after she was forced to reverse tax cuts that alarmed financial markets and sent interest rates soaring. But the party's long slumber began during Mr Johnson's scandal-scarred term in office.
There were echoes of the Johnson era at the election in the Northamptonshire constituency of Wellingborough, where the Tory MP, Peter Bone, was recalled by voters following a bullying and sexual misconduct scandal.
In the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won the seat by more than 18,000 votes. This time, voters elected Labor candidate Gen Kitchen by a margin of 6,436 votes – the biggest vote loss suffered by the Conservatives in a post-war by-election for a seat they were defending.
In the other election, in Kingswood, near Bristol, Labor won a Tory seat vacated by Chris Skidmore, an energy minister. He had resigned in protest against the government's plan to issue more permits for the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea. The Conservatives had won the seat in 2019 by more than 11,000 votes. This time, Labor candidate Damien Egan won the seat with 2,501 votes.
While each race had its own peculiarities, both reflected deep-seated voter fatigue among the Conservatives, who have run the government for fourteen years. Mr Sunak did not bother to campaign in either constituency, a testament to the party's low expectations of retaining its seats.
However, such elections are often seen as a harbinger of a party's performance at a general election, and these defeats confirmed the ominous prospects for the Tories. With polls showing that hundreds of Tory lawmakers could lose their seats, officials say the mood within the party is now bordering on panic.
That's why every new electoral setback raises speculation that the Conservatives will turn against their leader. Even before Thursday's vote, Mr Sunak had compounded these concerns with a series of political missteps.
In an interview with TV presenter Piers Morgan, Mr Sunak appeared to accept a 1,000 pound (about $1,260) bet that Britain would put asylum seekers on a plane to Rwanda before the next general election. Critics attacked him for gambling on the lives of people crossing the English Channel in small boats.
Mr Sunak then came under fire for making a joke in the House of Commons about Labour's position on transgender people. As Mr Sunak spoke, the mother of Brianna Ghey, a transgender teenager who was murdered, visited Parliament. Mr Sunak repeatedly refused to apologise.
As Sunak inherited a warring party, an economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, a healthcare system in crisis and the war in Ukraine, analysts said these events revealed a troubling deficit in his political instincts.
“He is not a particularly convincing politician, which is not entirely surprising given how rapid his rise to the top was,” said Professor Bale, who has written several books on the Conservative Party.
It is fair to say that Mr Sunak has never presented himself as a benevolent politician, but rather as a responsible steward of the British economy, following Mrs Truss. But after calming the markets, he found it difficult to develop policies to supplement British growth or reduce the red ink in public finances.
“They are neither stupid nor economically illiterate,” Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at Kings College London, said of Mr Sunak and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt. “But they have essentially given up on doing anything other than setting short-term traps for the opposition.”
Mr Sunak dug himself a deeper hole with his five goals. As well as restoring growth, he promised to halve inflation, reduce the national debt, stem the flow of boats across the Channel and shorten waiting times at National Health Service hospitals. He has achieved none of these objectives, except for reducing inflation, for which the Bank of England arguably deserves much of the credit.
“He keeps promising to do things that aren't possible in the time he has,” said Robert Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester. “It just makes his base angry because it's not feasible, and they know that.”
Still, the process of removing Mr Sunak would be a challenge, even for a party known for its ruthlessness in ousting unpopular leaders. Unless he agrees to step aside, which he won't, more than fifty Conservative lawmakers would have to turn on Mr Sunak to force a vote of no confidence. Lawmakers can privately submit letters urging a contest; it is not known how many did this.
But few have publicly called on the prime minister to stop. When Simon Clarke, a former minister, did so recently, he was quickly disavowed by his Tory colleagues, one of whom advised him to find a dark room, lie down and sort himself out. Lawmakers know that a change in leadership would expose the party's internal divisions unless a consensus emerges on a successor to Mr Sunak.
That seems very unlikely. Much of the agitation against Mr Sunak is coming from the right. Critics such as David Frost, once an adviser to Mr Johnson, have warned that the party is heading for defeat and that if it does not act, “soon there will be nothing left but smoking rubble”, as Mr Frost put it.
The most prominent right-wing potential leadership candidate is Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, who has insisted on her loyalty to Mr Sunak even after news reports said she is a member of a WhatsApp group of Tory lawmakers called 'Evil Plotters'. Former hardline home secretary Suella Braverman, who was sacked from her job by Mr Sunak, is also said to have leadership ambitions.
Yet the party's centrists would likely baulk at installing a polarizing figure in Downing Street before the election. A more likely compromise choice would be Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, whose profile soared when she played a high-profile role at the coronation of King Charles III last year.
“Given the polls, it could be a final roll of the dice,” Professor Bale said. But he added: “Even she would think it would be better to stick with Sunak and hope that the economy has finally bottomed out and is on its way up.”