No 'Sir Galahad or Boudica to ride to the rescue' warns former Tory leader
The latest call to replace the UK Prime Minister underlines the Conservatives' struggle for re-election.
Believe it or not, there is still a belief amongst some Tory MPs that they can win the next election.
“I am fighting to win this election and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it was possible,” Isaac Levido, the Conservatives Australian campaign director told the recent gathering of MPs at the 1922 committee.
While a campaign director can hardly admit to being on course for a loss, it is surprising how many MPs genuinely agree with Levido that the election is winnable.
The way they see it, when the election is called, voters will take a closer look at a man who, after four years, remains mostly an enigma - Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Starmer has so far failed to establish an emotional connection with voters or present much of an alternative agenda. This makes him highly vulnerable to a brutal character assassination campaign - just the type Levido is an expert in waging.
Levido’s 2019 ‘Bill You Can’t Afford’ campaign he and his colleagues in Liberal CHQ ran against the then Australian Labor Leader Bill Shorten won the Liberals a surprise third term in office. Just like Starmer, Shorten had been expected to saunter into office.
History will need to be defied if Levido is to again match that success in the UK, given the Conservatives have never won five straight terms and Labour enjoys a 27-point lead in the polls.
The bouts of regicide, including the decision to assassinate their landslide-winning leader Boris Johnson and replace him with the hapless Liz Truss have compounded their gargantuan task.
While Tory MPs hastily terminated Truss’ leadership after 44 days, famously, faster than lettuce could expire, some still can’t disembark the sushi-train of self-indulgence.
Simon Clarke’s opinion piece for the Tories’ paper of choice, The Telegraph, calling for Sunak to be replaced (by whom was not stated) is a case in point.
‘The unvarnished truth is that Rishi Sunak is leading the Conservatives into an election where we will be massacred,’ Clarke wrote.
‘I know many MPs are afraid another change of leader would look ridiculous.
‘But what could be more ridiculous than meekly sleepwalking towards an avoidable annihilation because we were not willing to listen to what the public are telling us so clearly?’
Tory MPs were unimpressed.
‘Either Simon has momentarily, and entirely out of character, been a buffoon, or he has fallen victim to a sinister plot by black hat anarchists hell-bent on the destruction of the country and the Conservative Party,’ said one Tory MP, who I have agreed not to name in order to reflect to you the real level of anger inside the party aimed at Clarke right now.
‘I can think of no other explanation.’
Those who were willing to go on record were slightly more diplomatic.
‘I understand the frustration many feel about the very bad Conservative poll rating,’ former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith told Latika Takes.
‘But changing the leader now would not of itself rescue us months before an election.
‘The key is to show the public that on migration, net zero costs, woke culture wars, low taxation and growth, Labour is in the wrong place and poses a real threat to the way people want to lead their lives.
‘Our future shouldn’t rely on the idea that there is some Sir Galahad or a Boudica ready to ride to the rescue but instead, people want to know we are - on their side and not on their backs.’
Steve Double who represents the constituency of St Austell and Newquay in Cornwall said: ‘It is very disappointing that some of my colleagues seem determined to continue fighting each other rather than focus on winning the upcoming election.’
‘If we are to have any chance of narrowing the gap in the polls and continuing in government we need to unite behind the Prime Minister and focus on delivering for the country and taking the fight to Labour.’
The question for the Conservative party may be whether it is themselves or the public who want to destroy it first.