On the fringes of cabinet last Tuesday ministers chatted in hushed tones about the Tory mega-donor Frank Hester’s “clearly racist” remarks about Diane Abbott, revealed by the Guardian the previous night, but concluded that “we’ve got to get the money in”.
It took No 10 until the end of the day to condemn his words as “racist and wrong” – 24 hours after the original story broke – while Sunak himself didn’t comment until prime minister’s questions the next day. “It went on too long,” admits one cabinet minister.
Downing Street’s handling of the row had uncomfortable echoes of the dying days of Boris Johnson’s premiership for some Tory MPs, with the instinctive reaction to double down and tough it out rather than facing up to the inevitable consequences.
It was not the only difficult moment for Sunak, in what was one of the most troubled weeks since he become prime minister, and which followed a budget that failed to deliver any shift in the polls.
The former Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson defected to Reform, angering the right of the party, who felt he should not have been stripped of the whip, and the rest, who believed it was a mistake for Sunak to have given him such a high-profile role in the first place.
The despondency that has existed for months in Tory ranks turned to despair, and the anxiety among MPs about their electoral prospects with Sunak at the helm has led to yet another bout of leadership speculation.
“This is the weakest Rishi’s been since becoming leader and the most danger he’s been in,” said one former minister. “Nothing is moving the dial and now No 10’s judgment has been thrown into question too.”
This has all led to speculation in recent days that some MPs on the right of the party want Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, to act as a “stalking horse” candidate to trigger a leadership contest before the next general election.
Mordaunt’s allies deny that she has been involved in any plotting, suggesting that the briefing has come from her enemies instead. It is widely known in Westminster, however, that she has been doing the rounds of constituency parties across the country.
So far, just a handful of Tory rightwingers appear to want a contest before the election. Some have majorities of just a few thousand and are fearful of losing their seats.
Yet for the first time some figures in the centre of the party are also having doubts that Sunak can last the course. “How can we get rid of another prime minister this close to an election but, at the same time, how can we keep him when we all know what the result will be?” one senior minister pondered.
Many of those who are downbeat about their prospects at the election still think it would be madness to try to ditch Sunak.
“The public has decided, with some justification, that we are out of touch, out of ideas, out of control and out of time,” a second former minister said. “But a cynical febrile last-ditch coup as the day of public judgment approaches will just make it worse.”
Government insiders say that even Sunak is concerned that, with the mood on the Tory benches increasingly feverish and the party looking ungovernable, the situation is not sustainable until November, when he is expected to hold the election.
But the prime minister has been convinced that the best thing he can do is wait until the autumn, when the green shoots of economic recovery might have started to appear. “We need to sit tight and wait for the economy to turn,” said one senior Tory.
“The vast majority of MPs want the extra time,” said one No 10 source. “They want us to be able to make progress on all these positive indicators like inflation and mortgage rates coming down, the economy starting to grow and giving people the chance to feel it in their pockets.”
Sunak’s allies are rallying behind him. The transport secretary, Mark Harper, told MPs on Sunday to “have some confidence” in the prime minister and remember that “politics is a team game”.
Another cabinet minister, who said it would be “absolutely disastrous” for the Tories to have yet another leadership contest, warned: “If we’re to be a credible government we need to stop this self-indulgence, fix the bayonets and line up behind the leader. If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.”
Sunak himself will get a chance to address his party at the 1922 Committee meeting of backbenchers on Wednesday, when he is expected to urge them to put on a united front and “stick with the plan” amid Tory hopes that inflation figures will continue to fall this week.
He will also have an opportunity to focus on his Rwanda plan, which returns to the Commons on Monday, and which the Tory right hopes could help keep the Reform party at bay, with yet more speculation that Nigel Farage is planning to return to the political frontline.
The most perilous moment for Sunak will come at the 2 May local elections, which are predicted to be disastrous for the Tories. It could be the moment that tips jittery Tory MPs over the edge, and which could trigger the 53 letters needed for a confidence vote, albeit accidentally. “If No 10 doesn’t take what the plotters are doing seriously and have a plan for post-locals, they’re leaving themselves desperately exposed,” a former minister said.
“Enough colleagues might start to say ‘maybe we do need change’. I don’t think we have 53 idiots in the party, but rebellions start with a smaller number and grow … it’s dangerous to underestimate these things.”
