‘Why is he so bad at politics?’ A Conservative MP was outraged after Rishi Sunak abruptly canceled the Greek prime minister’s visit last week over the Parthenon marbles. “That says everything about where his antenna is pointing: far from what ordinary MPs are thinking, let alone ordinary voters.” Even the prime minister’s supporters see the controversy as unfortunate; in particular, they suspect that many “ordinary MPs” until last week thought the statues were very valuable toy marbles.
Sunak’s decision to cancel the meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis was not a calculated way of showing he was standing up to European countries: it was a personal reaction to “showing off” on an issue he feared could have an impact on other works. But the way the fight developed says a lot about the Prime Minister and his party.
Sunak’s critics would rather the week be spent talking about how he is trying to resolve the government’s problem with its policy of deporting Rwandans. On Friday, Sunak admitted that Britons’ patience was “wearing thin” and said he wanted to start refugee flights as soon as possible. But many MPs on the party’s right wing suspect he is not committed to the methods they insist on, including giving ministers the power not to implement elements of the European convention on human rights. Ignoring the convention is a confidence issue for many Tory MPs; So much so that the chatter in the party about the number of letters calling for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister has risen above the constant noise. In the Conservative Party, normal weather turned into heavier showers.
Emergency legislation takes some time to prepare because, regardless of its content, it will result in the resignation of at least one minister. The briefing on the bill turned into a milkman’s order book; While Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick can, with all the guile he can, only remove “full-fat” measures, his new boss at the Home Office, James Cleverly, intends to review parts of the legislation that would risk it getting stuck and clotting in the House of Lords.
He needs to fulfill his promise to start flights by the next election, and that means breaking some eggs
Jenrick and Sunak have held meetings to reach a compromise, but Jenrick’s colleagues, who believe he is working for them, still expect him to resign if their demands are not met. They assume that if a “full-scale” bill is passed, Victoria Prentis will leave the attorney general’s office. “Their positions are mutually exclusive,” says a colleague. This raises the question of whether justice minister Alex Chalk, who has been as outspoken on the rule of law as the limits of collective responsibility allow, should also consider his own position. Sunak doesn’t like confrontation, but he needs to make good on his promise to start flying by the next election, and that means breaking some eggs.
Many ministers sympathize with Sunak’s plight; The phrase “doing your best at an impossible task” comes up a lot. But the party as a whole is not that supportive, which is why a lot of the things the prime minister tries to do get such a flat response.
He lost the marble war because his party is in no mood to applaud the same old nonsense. There were very few MPs prepared to go on the air and explain why canceling the meeting was a brilliant move; This is something even self-respecting politicians are often prepared to do when they fully support a leader. Nor do they trust him to stick to a position, whether on marble or immigration. “Why would you trust him as he left the press conference? [Rwanda] “It was the most important measure of the week, just one in a ‘basket of measures,'” a senior reservist complains. A more charitable view is that Sunak and Cleverly, talking about the basket, were merely telling voters not only about Rwanda but also other measures designed to stop the boats and some more. It may be that he is trying to show that he is working on successful ones too. But the problem is that there are not enough Conservative MPs with a philanthropic view at the moment.
The impression that Sunak does not know what he is doing from week to week was not well supported by his reinstatement as the “change candidate” at this autumn’s party conference. This new branding took around a month before the launch, warning voters not to take chances with Labor.
Polls at the end of the summer had suggested to Sunak’s team that the next general election would be a “reshuffle election”. When their conference positioning didn’t work, they looked further into the poll and realized that rather than painting Keir Starmer as the continuity that voters should reject, it would fall prey to painting Conservative continuity and Labor as extreme and inconsistent. Back support for the Conservatives.
Sunak is visibly more comfortable with his current positioning, which includes David Cameron, a key figure in the consensus over the last 30 years that he recently claimed to have rejected. Cameron will remind Sunak that he faced endless whining from Tory supporters before winning a majority in 2015. Sunak should probably remember that Cameron’s attempts to deal with this whining led to his demise in the form of an EU referendum he did not want. lost unexpectedly.
Even though Sunak felt more comfortable, continuity made little difference in the polls. But Sunak’s allies say they do not expect a major backlash from voters who they say are consciously not paying attention to what is a far more dull season of Westminster politics than the previous few years. Isaac Levido, the party’s political strategist, told friends at the beginning of the year that he did not expect any change in the polls in 2023. Some of his colleagues do not think the Conservatives will regain the upper hand over Labor. but others argue it has to happen at some point: “We need the party to act like a team instead of all this fighting.”
Too many Tory MPs are mentally out of control and can’t be bothered to go through the motions of supporting Sunak
Leaders whose troops think they have a good chance of winning the next election have much more leeway than Sunak: too many Tory MPs are mentally out of control right now and can’t be bothered to go through the motions of support for Sunak. Even when the Prime Minister launches a slogan, he has little hope of MPs saying it as robotically as they did before previous Conservative election victories. “Long-term economic plan” in 2015 and “Get Brexit Done” in 2019. While the “long-term economic plan” had the advantage of being too meaningless to be examined, “Get Brexit Done” was direct but also vague: there was no need for details on how to do it. “Long-term decisions for a brighter future” is too long and requires MPs to believe that decisions are being made that are clearly unrelated to a range of important issues such as housing and social care.
Scrapping a rail line, already hotly debated and with a visibly inflated budget, wasn’t as much of a long-term decision as the supply-side issues that prevented voters from owning their own homes, or even renting ones with enough space for a fresh start. Family or the NHS can control when patients leave hospitals. A crackdown on smoking won’t make much of a difference in the long run either, as young people enter classrooms under a cloud of nicotine from e-cigarettes. But even if slogans and policies are collected, Conservative Party MPs are not actually in the mood to shout slogans: there is not enough team spirit for that.
For all the disappointment expressed with Sunak, ministers have almost as strong feelings about their colleagues who are busy battling their own party. Many don’t understand why it hasn’t come together yet; They view all the briefings and counter-briefings on Rwanda as completely counterproductive and the kind of self-destructive behavior you’d expect from a group licking its wounds in opposition after an election defeat. So the question of why Sunak is so bad at politics is unfair. His “ordinary MPs” act as if they do not have the toughest election in their history ahead of them. Marbles don’t win elections, but neither can divided parties.
• Isabel Hardman is deputy editor of the Spectator