Why did I support Rishi Sunak? It’s a question I find myself having to answer with alarming regularity. When the party emerges from the bunker on the morning of July 5th, blinking into the sun, someone will have to take responsibility for the Götterdämmerung of the world’s oldest political party.
In fairness, with the choice presented in 2022, he seemed the best option. The right people – well, Dominic Cummings and Nigel Lawson – rated him. He’d been right about inflation. And I’d interviewed Liz Truss. He has deeply disappointed my hopes. But I’d vote for him again over her.
It has taken Sunak a year and a half to get the Tories into the terminal position that Truss dragged us to in a month. Nonetheless, the scale of the coming shellacking has long been obvious for those willing to open their eyes. Should Sunak have been replaced, as some suggested in January? I doubt it.
Indulging in counterfactuals does not make an iota of difference to our imminent shellacking. But those who suggested Sunak’s removal earlier this year needed to get real. A confidence vote and leadership election would have been the path to madness. This was not 2019. Vote Leave was not waiting in the wings. Changing leaders would not have avoided a defeat but hastened it.
The call for an immediate election would have been hard to ignore. Between them, CCHQ and Number 10 bunker have run a campaign so ill-executed even Theresa May must find it embarrassing. But I cannot think of any viable alternative team that would have done better. Smashing the glass marked “Leadership Election” would have been a desperate headlong leap toward chaos.
We are where we are. The only hope in this last week is that things don’t deteriorate further. I started this campaign dreaming of a result as bad as 1997. Now I pray we don’t come third. Double figures will be an existential crisis, but even 60 MPs would leave the Tories viable. Hope for Labour 31, not Canada 93.
The only interesting feature of this miserable election is the sheer range of possible outcomes touted by our hyperactive friends in the polling industry. One July 5th we could be anywhere between “1997 wasn’t too bad, ackchyually” and Ed Davey being Leader of the Opposition.
Whatever the result, next Friday, a shell-shocked and shrunken parliamentary party will emerge blinking from their rural redoubts looking for someone to blame. Calls for Sunak’s head will come as soon as the exit poll drops, aided by the amateur coroners of the right-wing entertainment industry.
Sunak’s leadership will be toast. Only the most delusional Downing Street groupie could imagine he would be doing anything other than announcing his resignation in just over a week. The question now is how long he remains in post, and what he can do to shape the party’s post-mortem.
As Peter Franklin has explained, the party needs a survival plan for the coming weeks and months. How do we respond to defeat? Plunging immediately into a leadership election would be a mistake – not least because we won’t have a new Chairman of the 1922 Committee until Parliament has met, and because there is a decent chance all the leading candidates will have lost their seats.
If the choice is between a 1997-style leadership contest – as quick as possible, concluded before the party conference – and a 2005-style one – stretched out through into December – the latter is preferable. Turning the party conference into a leadership beauty pageant will be the best way to drive media interest, attract sponsors, and encourage dejected members to turn up.
But more important even than re-stuffing CCHQ’s depleted coffers is the importance of avoiding a contest amid the immediate post-election rancor and finger-pointing. Tim Bale has made clear the lessons to be learned from 1997’s aftermath. William Hague won by telling the selectorate what it wanted to hear: that the defeat was a blip, and that all was really well. How did that go?
Every party member will have their thoughts on what has gone wrong in the last fourteen years. A quick leadership contest, haunted by Nigel Farage’s spectre, will not be a vehicle for dispassionate and honest analysis. Plaudits will go to those who shout the loudest and promise the most. Marry in haste, repent at leisure – especially if it involves selling the party out to Reform.
Our Deputy Editor has also highlighted that this election demonstrates that CCHQ is not fit for purpose. The party machinery is not just rusty, but beyond repair. An inquiry will need to be held into both the reasons for the defeat – as long-term as they may be – and the state of the party organisation. Its conclusions must not be sugar-coated or studiously ignored by competing tribes.
I can think of one or two particularly good candidates for overseeing such a process. But establishing such an inquiry would be down to the leader. This returns us to the biggest post-election question: what will happen to Sunak? Will he stay or will he go? After he resigns, how long will he remain as leader? The sooner he is gone, the shorter the contest will be – subject to negotiation.
The Prime Minister’s critics accuse him of California Dreamin’: of planning on jetting off to his $7.2 million pad in Santa Monica the moment he loses. Cue grumbling about green cards, and Nadine Dorries playing Columbo. I have always been sceptical of the rumours, if only to think the best of Sunak. But some of his recent predecessors have set a poor example for sticking around.
In fairness, who wouldn’t rather be sunning themselves rather than presiding over a Tory leadership election? Sunak will be a hate figure across the right. MPs, members, and Editors will blame him for the party’s catastrophe. They will demand he goes as soon as possible, and then condemn him for doing so.
But even if Sunak resigned and sodded off to the Pacific, he would remain leader until his successor was elected. We do not have a formal deputy or an interim leader in the style of our Canadian counterparts. One expects calls for someone to take over from Sunak temporarily – Call for Cameron? Hollar for Hayes? – but I struggle to see how they could be appointed or command support.
Sunak’s absence would leave a vacuum. Authority would split – to the most senior remaining ex-ministers, to the most popular potential leadership candidates, to Graham Brady’s as-yet-unelected successor, to the two princes across the water in Henley and Clacton, to leading figures in the voluntary party and CCHQ, and the loudest voices in the commentariat. In short, utter chaos.
On this basis, even if Sunak does want to be back in his beachfront condo in time for the start of the California school year, I see little alternative to him staying in place. In fairness, he has denied the suggestion that he wants to skedaddle whenever asked – not least because he wants to see Southampton back in the Premier League. But pleasure (?) must be mixed with business.
There is the not-impossible situation of Sunak losing his seat – an unprecedented situation for a sitting Prime Minister. Having given the party constitution a quick scan I see nothing for this eventuality. But whilst you must be an MP to run to be leader, you don’t have to remain as one. Sunak will stay leader even if he is out of Parliament. Well, I did urge him to copy Alec Douglas-Home.
My favourite post-war Prime Minister stayed on after 1964 to oversee the establishment of a leadership election to choose his successor. Michael Howard also tried to change the leadership rules after 2005. The party will be no more interested in agreeing now than it was then – especially when a change is proposed by a defeated leader who was beaten under the status quo.
Yet even if – to my chagrin – the chances of changing the rules are non-existent, Sunak will still need to stitch together an Opposition frontbench from whichever talent survives. John Major found himself serving as both Shadow Foreign and Defence Secretaries in the aftermath of 1997. Similar double jobbing must be expected now. If he loses his seat, he will need a stand-in.
Sunak’s resignation honours will have to be used to appoint a substantial number of ex-MPs to the Lords. If he does lose his seat, will he appoint himself? Is it possible? And will he want to be so tied down? Does Elon Musk want to hire Lord Sunak of Santa Monica? One notes that Sebastian Kurz, the former Austrian chancellor, splits his time between Peter Thiel and Vienna.
Even more reason for Sunak to stay this side of the Atlantic. The Prime Minister’s greatest service to his party – and country – was to step up to the grim task of leading it out of a mess of its own making. Now he faces shouldering the consequences of his own failure to match his promises. If he doesn’t, who will? He will be hounded and hated. His authority will be shot. But nobody else can.
What did Marx say about history repeating itself?