Rishi Sunak will face a challenge to his leadership if the Conservatives suffer heavy losses and lose high-profile Tory mayors in next week’s local elections, rightwing rebels have claimed.
Most Conservative MPs believe the prime minister would survive even a terrible set of results on May 2 because there is no viable alternative and a general election is around the corner. “There will just be sullen grumpiness all round,” said one former cabinet minister.
James Cleverly, home secretary, this week warned rebels that trying to remove Sunak would be a “catastrophic idea” and compared a putative putsch with jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
But a knot of Tory MPs and ex-officials, including diehard former supporters of ex-premiers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, say they will launch one final bid to topple Sunak.
Speaking anonymously, Tory rebels have told the Financial Times that a plan has been drawn up to destabilise or topple Sunak once the results of local elections in England and Wales have been announced.
The threat of a coup attempt has created a febrile atmosphere at Westminster with speculation that Sunak could name the date for a general election next week to head off the danger.
“It’s complete nonsense,” said a Downing Street insider, insisting that Sunak was still “planning for an autumn election” and that rumours of an early poll were being spread by Labour mischief-makers.
But a Tory rebel insider noted: “One MP said in a meeting this week: ‘At this point in time, the PM could cure cancer and the public would be angry with him for not having done it sooner’.”
Plotters claim to have a grid of events lined up to undermine Sunak and say there is a whipping operation to try to muster the 52 letters required from Tory MPs to trigger a no-confidence vote.
“The polls and focus groups that have gone round show that nothing Rishi does matters. It’s not the policy, it’s the messenger. People just don’t like the guy,” the rebel insider said.
A rightwing Tory MP, who denied being part of any plot, predicted that some in the party would move against Sunak after the local elections and would rally around any alternative capable of “stemming the bloodshed”.
“Over the Easter recess, colleagues spent more time on the ground in their seats and got a better sense of how bad things are,” the MP said.
On Saturday, Dan Poulter, the Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and a former minister, defected to Labour.
Many Conservative MPs refer to talk of a possible coup as “mad”, but they accept that Sunak could face new party infighting at the end of next week. Much depends on Thursday’s election result.
Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, local elections experts at Plymouth University, have predicted the Tories could lose 500 of the roughly 900 council seats they are defending, which would in itself be a serious setback.
However, Sunak’s allies are particularly focused on whether the party can win any of the high-profile mayoralties up for grabs, notably London, West Midlands and Tees Valley.
Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, is expected to win a third term, but Andy Street, Tory mayor of West Midlands, and Lord Ben Houchen, Tory mayor of Tees Valley, are in hard-fought battles with Labour.
Tory grandees believe Street and Houchen can prove that Conservatives can still win — in spite of the party trailing Labour by 20 points or more in national opinion polls — and that will buy Sunak some breathing space.
The prime minister’s team is braced for trouble and is doing its best to keep potentially mutinous MPs away from Westminster, where plotting is often rife in the Gothic palace’s corridors and bars.
A May bank holiday recess begins on May 2, polling day, with the Commons not resuming until May 7. Even after that, MPs expect only “light whipping” for the rest of the week, meaning that some will stay away.
The idea of Tory MPs replacing Sunak with a fourth leader in a single parliament, following Johnson and Truss, just months before an election is seen by most Conservative MPs as unconscionable.
The absence of a viable alternative to Sunak is a problem facing the rebels, even if some posit Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, as a compromise candidate.
Mordaunt, who faces a struggle to hold on to her Portsmouth North seat at the election, insists her name is often mentioned by people who want to damage her. “The public are so tired of this,” she has told friends.
Sunak’s allies insist the prime minister’s success in finally securing Royal Assent for his Rwanda bill, which underpins the government’s strategy to curb illegal migration, and his new promise to boost defence spending has shown he is on the front foot and up for the fight.
Cleverly warned Tory rebels not to “feed the psychodrama”. He told a Westminster press lunch: “We should have the discipline to stay focused on what we’ve achieved in government and what we’re planning to do next.”
One former minister loyal to Sunak said: “Dismal results are likely next week but the show will go on with improving economic and security.
“There’s no sense that there are anywhere near enough mad MPs to attempt to send the Tory party into the guaranteed death spiral that a sword-wielding leadership upheaval would bring.”