At the centre of this week’s mega-poll that projected an election wipeout for the Conservatives there lurked both a mystery and a statement of the obvious. Who was behind it? No one seemed to know. But what do they want? Seemingly, a change from Rishi Sunak.
It is a sign of Sunak’s plight that the poll – fronted by a Tory peer and explicitly framed as showing the prime minister’s policies are leading the party into doom – was not even the greatest act of disloyalty in a week when 60 backbenchers voted to amend his flagship migration policy.
That said, the YouGov survey of 14,000 voters, extrapolated to constituencies to give the headline finding of a post-election Conservative party reduced to 169 MPs, was arguably even more ominous for Sunak, for a series of reasons.
Firstly is the fact that he appears to face a new and thus far anonymous opponent. While the polling, set out in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, was presented by Lord Frost, the estimated £70,000 cost was covered by the Conservative Britain Alliance, a previously unknown organisation described only as a “group of Conservative donors”.
The organisation, if that is what it is, has no web presence, and no register as a company, charity or electoral entity. Those rumoured to be behind it who have insisted they are not include Paul Marshall, the hedge fund manager behind GB News, and a series of other figures in the rightwing Tory firmament. A spokesperson for Marshall denied he had paid for the poll and said he had never previously heard of the alliance.
Under British Polling Council guidelines, all polls have to say who commissioned them. However, this needs only a name to be contacted – in this case David Frost – and does not need to specify who paid for the work.
In place of facts have swirled various rumours, including the idea that the backers are working on behalf of ministers or former ministers who want to replace Sunak, whether before the election or, more likely, in its wake.
The agenda of those behind the poll was clear. Both the Telegraph and Frost argued in Monday’s paper that the answer was to focus squarely on the concerns of Tory voters minded to defect to Reform UK, with the former arguing that this could mean the difference between a landslide loss and a hung parliament.
While this prescription was arguable – YouGov took the unusual step of adding a note to its explanation of the poll rubbishing it – such manoeuvrings are deeply unwelcome to Sunak and his team, with senior No 10 officials known to be furious.
On Monday evening, a clearly exasperated Isaac Levido, the Australian political strategist who is Sunak’s campaign director, told a meeting of Tory backbenchers that it was time to “get serious” if they actually wanted to win the election. “Let me be clear: divided parties fail,” he warned them.
What does it all mean? As ever it depends who you ask. Tim Bale, the professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, and a close observer of the Conservatives, said it appeared to be a salvo by a faction loyal to the small-state wing of the party.
“Clearly, there is some sort of concerted plan by someone to get rid of Rishi Sunak. It’s not simply about wanting to push the Conservative party in a certain direction, they’ve got so desperate they might want to precipitate a leadership challenge,” he said.
Whether this would succeed was another matter, Bale said: “I think most Conservative MPs are persuaded of the fact that they would make themselves a laughing stock if they went through all that again. And also, there’s no one sensible waiting in the wings who would want to do it.”
Among the few Conservatives who are public in their desire to replace Sunak is David Campbell Bannerman, the former MEP who coheads the Boris Johnson-friendly Conservative Democratic Organisation.
“Sunak staying on will just guarantee we’re out of power for 10 years if not more. If you lose on the scale that these polls suggest, down to 160 MPs, it’s a hell of a cliff to climb,” he said.
“My view is that Starmer is beatable with the right policies and the right leader, or at least we’ll have a respectable showing. Currently, Conservative voters are on strike, are not coming out, and under Sunak they won’t come back.”
In contrast, one Tory backbencher usually loyal to Sunak simply rolled their eyes when asked about the poll. “It was probably people who wanted a return of Boris Johnson, but frankly it’s just very unhelpful,” they said.
It did, however, have some uses, they added: “It’s clear that a plurality of people in the country are more to the right on immigration than we are and we would do well to remember that.”
One thing all sections of the party appeared united on was an insistence that they have no idea who is behind the Conservative Britain Alliance.
“I don’t know who they are. I hadn’t come across them before,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister. “When a poll comes out that shows, seat by seat, that your party is not doing well then you are obviously interested in that.”
While Rees-Mogg is a sometime critic of Sunak, he said that if the mystery poll backers did seek a change of prime minister, he would not support this: “I see no point in destabilising the leadership of your own party this close to the election. I just don’t think it makes any sense.”
