Both a mystery and an obvious statement lurked at the heart of this week’s mega-poll predicting an election wipeout for the Conservatives. Who was behind it? Nobody seemed to know. But what do they want? It appears to be a change from Rishi Sunak.
It is a sign of Sunak’s plight that the poll, fronted by a Conservative colleague and clearly framed as showing the prime minister’s policies doom the party, is not even the biggest act of disloyalty in a week when 60 hardliners voted to change his bid. flagship immigration policy.
However, the YouGov poll of 14,000 voters extrapolated by constituency to give the headline post-election finding of the Conservative party’s reduction in MPs to 169 was arguably even more worrying for Sunak for a number of reasons.
First, it appears to be facing a new and so far unknown opponent. While the vote in Monday’s Daily Telegraph was presented by Lord Frost, the estimated £70,000 cost was covered by the Conservative Alliance for Britain, a previously unknown organization described only as a “group of Conservative donors”.
The organisation, if it does, has no online presence and is not registered as a company, charity or electoral body. Those rumored to be behind it but insist they are not include Paul Marshall, the hedge fund manager behind GB News, and a host of other figures in right-wing Tory skies. Marshall’s spokesman denied paying for the poll and said he had never heard of the alliance before.
Under British Poll Council rules, all polls must state who commissioned them. But this only requires contacting one name (in this case David Frost) and there is no need to specify who paid for the work.
In lieu of facts, various rumors circulated, including the idea that supporters were working on behalf of ministers or former ministers seeking to replace Sunak, whether before or after the election.
The agenda of those behind the survey was clear. Both the Telegraph and Frost argued in Monday’s paper that the answer was to focus squarely on the concerns of Tory voters considering defecting to a Reform UK; The former argued that it could mean the difference between a crushing loss and the suspension of parliament.
While this prescription is debatable (YouGov took the unusual step of including a note refuting it in its survey statement), such maneuvers are deeply unwelcome to Sunak and his team, and senior No 10 officials are known to be furious.
On Monday evening, Australian political strategist Isaac Levido, who is Sunak’s campaign director, told a meeting of Conservative Party supporters that it was time to “get serious” if they really wanted to win the election. “Let me be clear: divided parties fail,” he warned them.
What does all this mean? As always, it depends on who you ask. Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, and a close observer of the Conservatives, said it appeared to be a salvo from a group loyal to the party’s small state wing.
“Clearly someone has some sort of concerted plan to get rid of Rishi Sunak. This isn’t just about wanting to push the Conservative party in a certain direction; “They are so desperate that they may want to step up the leadership struggle,” he said.
Whether this will be successful is another matter, Bale said: “I think most Conservative MPs are convinced of the fact that if they go through all this again they will make themselves a laughing stock. “And there’s no one sane on the wings who would want to do that.”
Among the few Conservatives who have publicly expressed their desire to replace Sunak is former MP David Campbell Bannerman, who co-chairs the Boris Johnson-friendly Conservative Democratic Organisation.
“Sunak remaining in office will ensure we remain without electricity for 10 years, if not longer. “If you lose up to 160 MPs on the scale that these polls show, this is a difficult cliff to climb,” he said.
“My view is that Starmer can be defeated with the right policies and the right leader, otherwise we will at least put in a respectable performance. “Right now Conservative voters are on strike, they’re not going on strike and they won’t be coming back under Sunak.”
By contrast, a Tory supporter generally loyal to Sunak rolled his eyes when asked about the poll. “They were probably people who wanted Boris Johnson to come back, but frankly that doesn’t help much,” they said.
But they added that it has some uses: “It’s clear that most people in the country are more right-wing than we are on immigration, and we would do well to remember that.”
One point on which all sections of the party were united was the insistence that they had no idea who was behind the Conservative British Alliance.
“I don’t know who they are. I haven’t encountered them before,” said former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. “When a poll comes out that shows, seat by seat, that your party is not doing well, then obviously you’re dealing with that.”
Although Rees-Mogg was at one point critical of Sunak, he said he would not have supported it if backdoor poll supporters wanted a change of prime minister: “There is no point in destabilizing your party’s leadership so close to the election.” vote. “I just don’t think it makes any sense.”