The ship goes down and the panic starts. As the Tory party lurches towards the electoral rocks, the bridge is losing control and the crew are taking to the boats. Or at least some of them are, joined this week by a disaffected backbencher, Simon Clarke, and a reported band of a dozen rebels. Clarke’s thesis is that “an electoral massacre” can only be avoided if the ship mutinies and acquires its fifth captain in five years. His colleagues are mostly refugees from the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss eras, the source of so much of the Tories’ present troubles.
The new rebels are a measure of the herculean task that confronted Rishi Sunak on taking the Tory leadership just 15 months ago. A government long in office at this stage in a parliament has almost nothing going for it. Polls have sometimes been wrong – they forecast a Labour win in 1992 – but this seems unlikely now. They merely argue over the size of defeat. The Tories’ task is to keep their nerve, maintain loyalty to their leader and measure up to the challenge history has given them.
