Is Rishi Sunak’s honeymoon over?
NEXT week Rishi Sunak will gather his Cabinet at his country retreat of Chequers to begin mapping a course toward the 2024 General Election.
Tory pollsters have been conducting a “mega survey” of battleground seats — with their presentation on the scale of the task ahead to secure a historic fifth term in power unlikely to make for happy reading.
The away day will also be a chance for the PM to take stock at the end of his third full month in No10 — which had, so far, seen relative harmony breaking out on the Government benches.
Rested after the astonishing year of Conservative chaos in 2022, MPs thinking about rebelling were met with a deliberate and calculated climbdown to avoid bruising Commons splits.
Donors who were licking their wounds over the ousting of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were also beginning to open up their wallets again, and MPs were pleased with Sunak’s New Year five-point plan to fix the economy, boost growth, shrink inflation, cut NHS waiting lists and pledge to stop the Channel boats.
A direction of travel had been set and talk had begun to turn to “delivery” of those promises — but already siren voices suggesting more is needed are growing louder.
More than anything, Tory MPs wanted to give the latest PM a chance to show what he was made of, set out a vision and see if the polls would start to go in the right direction.
But now that truce is starting to fray as Labour’s polling lead remains stubbornly high, and the Conservatives are making little recovery.
‘Much bigger tests down the line’
While party chiefs note Sunak is performing better than the increasingly toxic Tory brand — with Sir Keir Starmer less popular than Labour in some polls — the headline figures are still massive double-digit leads for the Opposition.
In that climate, the grumbles are growing louder, and more and more Tory MPs are willing to go public with their concerns again.
While there was delight when Sunak put the kibosh on the SNP’s plan to make it easier for 16-year-olds to change their gender, a sweeping plan to outlaw trans conversion therapy has worried many — including Cabinet Minister Kemi Bandenoch — about its potential to criminalise parents.
The row had already caused a major headache for Johnson, with some MPs wondering why it was brought back at all if No10 are trying to keep the peace.
Ex-Minister David Davis also publicly broke cover on plans to scrap 4,000 remaining pieces of EU law — insisting it is “undemocratic”.
While major rebellions over wind farms and planning were diverted last year, Downing Street also unexpectedly climbed down this week on calls to go harder and tougher on tech giants.
Bosses of social media firms will now face jail — after No10 agreed to a rebel amendment to toughen up the online safety bill.
“We are saving all the goodwill and political capital for the fights that will actually move the dial,” one senior ally of the PM tells me.
“There is no point in having big fights on the little things when there are going to be much bigger tests down the line.”
Senior Cabinet ministers warn patience is beginning to wear thin at the top of the party.
Red lines on rebellions for Downing Street include any attempt to derail March’s Budget, or seeking to water down new anti-strike legislation and new laws to clamp down on small boats.
Some Tory MPs who have raised the matter with Sunak this month during endless “MP engagement” sessions are even hopeful he may be coming round to a more major overhaul of the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.
‘MP engagement’
But for now the focus remains trying to get the troubled Rwanda deportation scheme up and running.
Tension was ratcheted up this week with news that March’s Budget will be a “slimmed-down affair”, with no big tax cuts planned.
MPs worry time is even running out to slash Britain’s crippling record post-war tax burden and question whether the Treasury will ever let it happen.
A cynic might suggest the PM is saving the tax cuts for a pre-election giveaway in spring 2024 . . .
But matters came to a head yesterday, after the latest dishing out of levelling up money.
With £9billion of bids for cash submitted by councils, of course there was going to be disappointment when many were rejected.
Yet the fact that the Government can spend £2billion in a single day and still end up with negative headlines and pot-shots from senior Tories like Birmingham Mayor Andy Street has left heads in hands.
One Cabinet minister concluded anonymously it showed the Tories have lost the benefit of the doubt from the public and the media for good this side of a long spell in opposition.
But No10 will be clinging to the slight dip on inflation this week, and a number of indicators the economy might not be in quite the dire state everyone feared.
If inflation continues to drop and plans to stop the boats can get going, things will look a little brighter for the Tories ahead of May’s local elections.
But a question on a growing number of MPs’ lips is, will it be enough to prevent a pasting at the polls — both in May and, crucially, in 2024?