Last night Westminster’s floor-crosser par excellence, Will Dry, emerged into public view for the first time since his resignation from 10 Downing Street. Dry worked as a pollster for Rishi Sunak before defecting to the Conservative Britain Alliance (CBA), a mysterious group of Right-wingers that wants to oust the PM, late last year. He was behind a shock CBA poll in January that claimed the Tories would be wiped out if Sunak continues as leader.
At a panel organised by polling firm JL Partners yesterday to discuss the forthcoming election, Dry said that the PM is “an extremely good, decent, hardworking guy” but that it is “very, very difficult” to see him winning the election. He predicts a “handsome Labour majority” if an election were held tomorrow.
Dry also revealed the extent of his own political conversion, identifying himself as one of the voters for whom reducing immigration drastically is the number-one issue. Dry has been on quite a journey. He started out as a rare young Leave voter in the Brexit referendum. Then, full of regret, he became a student anti-Brexit campaigner at Oxford, calling for a second referendum and playing a major part in the push for a so-called People’s Vote. Things took a further twist when he joined Sunak’s Downing Street. Now he seems to have moved to the Right of the Conservative party.
His numerous changes of allegiance did not go unmentioned last night. “I was part of the campaign with Will to get people to campaign for a second referendum and Will was one of the leaders of the OFOC which was Our Future Our Choice,” said Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer who was also on the panel and helped lead the People’s Vote campaign, “he probably doesn’t want to be reminded of that now but, you know, we all have pasts.” “Don’t we all, Tom,” Dry zinged back, cryptically. “Yeah we do,” said Baldwin. Awkward.
