May 6, 2024 - 9:30am

I was wrong. When, last month, I asked whether a terrible set of local election results would prompt MPs to remove Rishi Sunak, I could find no logical reason why they shouldn’t. But I see my mistake now. I should have extended my search to illogical reasons too.

Certainly we can’t blame the pollsters. By and large, the various results were as bad as predicted. For instance, though the Tories didn’t quite drop to third place in the Blackpool South by-election, the Conservative-to-Labour swing was the third-biggest since the war. What’s more, of the 10 biggest such swings since 1945, half have happened under Sunak’s leadership.

That fact alone should be enough to prompt Tory MPs to swift and decisive action, but instead they’re sitting on their hands. I guess that’s one way to keep a seat.

Perhaps in the confusion of results, they missed their moment. Did those barmy rumours about Sadiq Khan losing in London bamboozle them? Did Ben Houchen’s victory on the Tees provide false hope? Or are they still trying to wrap their heads around national equivalent vote share?

Not really. This can’t be blamed on the fog of war. The indications are that the would-be Tory rebels gave up well before Thursday. According to Dan Hodges in the Mail on Sunday, they surrendered two weeks ago. “We don’t have enough MPs’ votes,” one of them told him, “and even if we did, we don’t have a candidate.”

So forget about no change, no chance. The new line from the Tory discontents is that whatever happens now is the Prime Minister’s fault. As a “rebel source” told Ben Riley-Smith of the Telegraph, “Rishi is now going to own the election.”

Except that, like a dodgy timeshare, he only owns some of the disaster. The coming election is the culmination of a crack-up that started before his leadership. It began with a bang — or rather the multiple blow-outs that constituted Partygate. That happened on Boris Johnson’s watch. Then, for 50 days, it was Liz Truss’s turn. As if we hadn’t forgotten, she helpfully reminded voters by promoting her book during the local election campaign.

Sunak’s portion of the blame is not insignificant. In his own way, he too has failed to deliver on the promises of 2019. But unlike Johnson and Truss, he’s been allowed by his MPs to get away with it. It’s not as if they’re incapable of changing leaders again: they’ve had enough practice. Nor, after the last few days, do they lack a pretext. Rather, they simply can’t rouse themselves to the necessary effort.

And that’s why we can’t limit the blame to the Prime Minister alone. The ministers who haven’t resigned in protest, the backbenchers who haven’t put in their letters of no confidence: they too must accept their share of the responsibility. After all, they were elected on a manifesto to control our borders, and level up the land that was betrayed with barely a protest. The honourable exceptions know who they are, but the swing will come for them all.


Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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