The Daily Telegraph has cleared its front page today for a constituency-based opinion poll suggesting that the Conservatives face a 1997-style general election defeat.
But that’s just the start. As I write, other related stories on the Telegraph‘s online front page include: “Jeremy Hunt among 11 Cabinet ministers predicted to lose seats if election due today“; How Reform UK will shatter the Tories – without winning a seat, and “Sunak’s immigration ineptitude has caused Leave voters to ditch the Tories” (by our columnist James Johnson of JLPartnersPolls).
And beneath the Telegraph‘s print splash is an opinion piece by David Frost under the headline “stunningly awful poll must shake Sunak out of his complacency”.
So who has commissioned the poll to which the paper is devoting so much reporting and commentary? “The poll was commissioned by a group of Conservative donors called the Conservative Britain Alliance and carried out by YouGov, working with Lord Frost,” the Telegraph reports.
I smell a rat – or the seventh cavalry, depending on one’s view. A poll takes time to research, but can be published quickly. It can be saved up for the most suitable moment in the view of those who have commissioned it and perhaps also those willing to publish it.
So what’s taking place in Parliament this week that might explain why now? Frost’s article provides the answer. “Three-quarters of the voters who have left us are Leave voters. Even now, this group puts the Tories ahead of Labour on the economy. The big problem is immigration, legal as well as illegal. That’s why this week’s vote on Rwanda is so important.”
ConservativeHome will have more to say about the rights and wrongs and ins and out of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill later this week. But for the moment, let me simply explain how the land lies.
Essentially, a group of Conservative MP on the party’s right want to see the Bill made more restrictive and another on its left less – or at least no more restrictive than it is now. Robert Buckland puts the latter case on the site this morning and we expect to see another MP put the former one during the next few days. The Bill’s Third Reading is due to take place on Wednesday after two days of committee stage consideration.
That fact plus bits of briefing and speculation, which may or may not be accurate, suggest that the Government is minded to take no amendments at all from either wing.
There is a sense that Rishi Sunak wants to get the Bill through the Parliament as quickly as possible, hopes to see it survive legal challenge, then get some flights off to Rwanda – and turn the developing general election campaign into one focused on the economy, and a message of “stick with the devil you know” against Sir Keir Starmer’s one of “time for a change”.
That’s all very well. But the Bill has to get through Third Reading first. And it’s here that Frost’s poll, these mysterious donors and the Telegraph‘s splash comes in. As well as some of its recent coverage. Consider this report from yesterday.
“The leaders of the three biggest groups on the Conservative Right have united to warn Sunak that they will vote against him on the Rwanda Bill this week unless he gives ground….”Danny Kruger, Sir John Hayes and Mark Francois compared themselves to the Tory “Spartans” who sank Theresa May’s Brexit deal, urging colleagues to join them in “standing firm” against Downing Street “pressure”.
Essentially, these MPs and others feel that Downing Street promised them before and during the Bill’s Second Reading debate that their amendments would be seriously considered…and welshed on this commitment once Second Reading had been achieved.
Of course, Number Ten still has the option of accepting some of these amendments or putting forward alternatives of its own – for example, to end “the continued right of migrants to delay their departure for many months, by making individual claims to UK courts by citing any number of personal circumstances, risks frustrating the entire purpose of the legislation”, as these MPs want.
But if Sunak gives ground to MPs on the right of the party during Committee, and these then vote for Third Reading, what if MPs on the left of the party kick up rough during Committee…and then themselves vote against Third Reading?
Worse still for Downing Street, CCHQ and the whips, what if Tory MPs from both wings end up opposing the Bill? The Government could end these uncertainties by making the Third Reading of an unamended Bill a vote of confidence. Conservative MPs of all kind would be unwilling to face a general election now. But ending these risks might only provoke new ones of a different kind.
Were to Sunak ram the Bill through in this way, he could provoke more letters to Graham Brady demanding a leadership ballot – with right-wing Tories denouncing what in their view would be an inadequate Bill. But if he doesn’t, could he lose the Bill altogether when it comes to Third Reading?
After all, 60 or so Conservative MPs have signed the right-wing amendments. Their number reportedly includes Lee Anderson, appointed a Party Deputy Chairman by Sunak after he topped this site’s Backbencher of the Year poll in 2022. Numbers have built.
And were the Bill to fail at Third Reading, what would the Prime Minister do? One logical response, given the stress he has put on stopping the boats, would be to seek a general election. But that would clearly be the last thing he’d want to do given the polls. And Number Ten’s plan seems to be fight the election primarily on the economy, not boats.
In such an event, the Rwanda scheme would have collapsed and Sunak would have no alternative to hand. That no-one else would do either would be beside the point.
In sum, the situation seems to be as follows. In the event of the Government making Third Reading a vote of confidence and winning it, there would be more “letters”. But were it not to do so and lose, there might well be “letters”, too. Or even if were not to do so and win narrowly, given the head of steam building up on bits of the right.
Mind you, Number Ten has been, and is, very confident about the Bill, and seems to think that the right hasn’t got the numbers. Furthermore, I remain convinced that most Tory MPs believe that replacing Rishi Sunak with a third successive leader who hasn’t been endorsed by the voters is impractical – and that were it to happen a general election would swiftly follow.
Others will disagree. As will some activists. And, perhaps, Frost himself. “MPs also have a responsibility to consider more broadly whether they think the current path can take us to an election win,” he wrote last year. “If they don’t, they shouldn’t be resigning themselves to it – they should be doing something about it.”
What might that something be? The timing and scale of the Telegraph splash is significant. And have a look at the Times as well as the Telegraph. The paper “understands that [Kemi] Badenoch, the business secretary, urged the prime minister to harden up the legislation”. When the concerns of Cabinet members become public, you can be sure that the temperature’s rising.