As the Guardian notes in an email news alert this morning:
Rishi Sunak is facing a Conservative meltdown over the Rwanda deportation bill after two deputy chairs said they would support rebel amendments aimed at blocking international human rights laws. Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith have defied the prime minister by backing rightwing challenges to the bill, which will be debated by parliament on Tuesday.
It is thought that sixty or more Tories might vote for amendments to Sunak's Rwanda legislation this week.
Whether that means that they will defeat Sunak depends on what Labour does and, more importantly, whether they would vote for the Bill either amended or unamended at the end of the day once they have had their say. It seems no one knows the answer to that question.
That, however, is not stopping the more extreme and stupid Tory MPs from hoping that they might push Sunak out this week. Dame Andrea Jenkyns meets both those criteria and is certainly making the case for them doing so.
Rationally, you have to think the Tories would not want to take the risk of four Prime Ministers in a single parliament, but then you realise how far the Tories really are behind and realise that a big Tory backer was willing to pay for the mega-poll that showed that which was published in the Telegraph yesterday and rationality ceases to be a factor in this. Might fear make them do it? Nothing should be ruled out, but I really cannot imagine who number four might be or how they might help.
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They’d elect the Coronation sword bearer of course!
She will lose her seat in an election
Maybe – but at 61% of the vote last time – she probably has one of the safer seats
Not according to every forecast I have seen
Here is a random thought from ‘right field; maybe the Conservative right, having already assumed they have lost the election, are taking a gamble; that by abandoning Sunak over the Rwanda bill they will put Labour on the spot over backing or rejecting the Rwanda Bill; and recover Conservative election hopes; whether Labour backs the Bill (and loses the ‘human rights’ Labour support), or rejects the Bill (and loses the ‘Red Wall ‘ support).
And that is politics in Britain today.
If I were the PM I would just call an election out of spite, not bother to campaign in my constituency and watch it all blow up from a comfortable distance (like California).
I think his father-in-law would have something to say about that. He wants Rishi as PM for as long as possible. Don’t underestimate that pressure….
The thing which confuses me about this isn’t necessarily the idea that Sunak really is going to be a ‘tech bro’ in California once he’s out of office, which is fair enough, I suppose.
It’s wondering just who would want to employ him given how utterly useless he has shown himself to be as Chancellor and PM (and probably as an MP as well)?
I’d imagine having an IT billionaire father-in-law might smooth the path for him somewhat, but he’s certainly not somebody I’d be interested in employing!
Craig Hoy MSP, the doggedly hapless Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives (where do they find them?); has entered the fray on Rwanda to claim that the evidence for Government success on immigration is the agreement with Albania. Albania is a European country, a member of NATO and an EU candidate. This is not an example of the success of Conservative immigration policy, but the incompetence of the Home Office for years, in not fixing an outstanding problem with a European country it was open to fix, but left to fester. Albania is not a triumph; its is a Red Herring. Even Hoy must know that as an exemplar for Britain’s immigration difficulties with the current third world migration, this is complete rubbish.
He must also know that even if they ever manage to send 200 migrants to Rwanda at £1m a ‘pop’; that achieves nothing; that would be nothing more than the very worst kind of misleading PR scam that fixes precisely nothing. The truth is the Conservatives have painted themselves into a corner, and have no idea what to do; except make up stories, and mislead the public about what they have been doing, for decades.
The Tories seem rather bare-facedly desperate to the point where they will scramble in broad daylight to find a way to appeal to voters.
But the question is this for me:
Which is worse – the Tory party or our fellow citizens who will be swayed by such behaviour?
This whole thing is repulsive.
They could put Boris Johnson in the Lords and make him their leader again. They’ve just done it with Cameron as Freign Minister, so why not Johnson. I don’t know of any precedent or law to stop them.
The thought terrifies me, but I can see the Tories doing it.
That YouGov poll yesterday.
“The Conservatives‘ campaign chief has dismissed a poll which predicted the party would face a drubbing at the next election as “false” and “orchestrated” to “undermine” Rishi Sunak.
Isaac Levido told a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers those behind the survey appeared to be “throwing in the towel” and fighting the next party leadership battle rather than attempting to win the election.”
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/other/tory-election-guru-tells-mps-to-ignore-catastrophic-poll-timed-to-undermine-sunak/ar-AA1n0Nb5
“The survey of over 14,000 people was commissioned by the former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost, who is aligned with the right-wing of the parliamentary Conservative party, and the seemingly new Conservative Britain Alliance. According to The Telegraph the group is comprised of donors to the Tory party, but little else is publicly known about who exactly is involved.”
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/yougov-poll-puts-more-right-rwanda-pressure-on-sunak
Could be another interesting week in Tory land.
Agreed
Why wouldn’t the Tories go for another leader?
As has been repeatedly proved by Prime Ministers Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak, the right-wing billionaire owned media will never hold the Tories accountable for their dishonesty, incompetence and inhumanity, the BBC will continue to treat whatever Fascist Frankenstein nightmare the Tories produce as if it was normal democratic politics and a frightening number of the supposedly intelligent will applaud any Right-wing leader that claims to be in favour of government without the politics.