This week in Brexitland, February 8, 2024

Why Sunak’s weakness threatens not only the future of the Conservative party but conservatism in Britain as we know it

This week saw the launch of yet another populist right-wing group. This one was under the banner of “Popular Conservatism” or “PopCon” (they actually used that word, I kid you not). The launch of this project ticked every box its enemies would have wished it to: the speech against Westminster elitism, all from within a building right across from the Home Office in the heart of Westminster; the speeches around taking on the privileged of Davos, given by public school boys who had recently been in the British cabinet; Liz Truss, the PM who couldn’t outlast a lettuce, telling us all about how to make conservatism popular again. There would be no way to parody such an event; it acted as a satire of itself already.

One of the main targets of the PopCon’s ire is Rishi Sunak. The prime minister just isn’t conservative enough for their liking; if he was, he’d be soaring in the polls now, they are certain of that much. He’s simply too weak to do what needs to be done. They are half-right on this latter point, except that the weakness he demonstrates is in refusing to take on the Tory MPs who met in Westminster this week to discuss a mode of conservative thinking and policy making that has already demonstrated itself to be anything but popular. In other words, Sunak’s weakness is most acutely demonstrated by his inability to do anything about the right-wing populist movements within his own party.

And this is where the danger lies for the Conservative party and indeed, conservatism as the dominant political force in British life. Sunak will be gone in a year’s time, not only from Number 10 but very possibly from parliament. It might be tempting to see him as a footnote in 21st century Tory history as a result. Yet I don’t think that will turn out to be the case. I think Sunak will end up being heavily influential, mostly by accident.

After the Conservatives lose the next general election, particularly if they lose it very badly, there will be a postmortem within the Tory party on how and why it happened that will be spread across several years. And Sunak has acted in a manner as prime minister that seems almost perfectly designed to make that discussion as divisive as it possibly ever could be. This is because his fundamental weakness has made it so that anyone can claim whatever they want to claim about him.

The right of the party will say that Sunak wasn’t right-wing enough, mostly by trying to push the “he wasn’t strong enough” line. That he wasn’t strong enough is obvious to everyone but the most devoted Sunak disciple, and so they will try and conflate “strong” with “right-wing in a populist manner”. The moderates in the Conservative party, on the other hand, will try and say that Sunak wasn’t moderate enough; he pushed things like Rwanda, which only allowed Reform and Farage to expose the party’s weakness on matters like immigration. They will say that Sunak should have been strong as a prime minister by saying he was going to undo the mistakes of his immediate predecessors; he was too weak, though, and allowed the moment to slip.

If your argument here is, “Don’t blame all this on Sunak - the discussion and divisiveness that will accompany the general election loss would have happened with or without him”, I think you’re wrong. Imagine if they had stuck with Boris Johnson. If the party had been decimated with him charge, the argument would have had much clearer lines. The moderates could have said that they had tried the populism stuff and it hadn’t worked. They now need to have someone more sensible in charge, someone who can convince the country that they know how to govern. It would have been extremely difficult for the right to argue against this given Johnson was their golden boy.

Or imagine if they had stuck with Truss. The right would have had no argument then whatsoever. It would have been obvious that the populist right project she fronted had been electorally defeated and that the rebuild would have to be something much more moderate.

This is why Sunak is so much worse a leader for the Conservative party than either Johnson or Truss - his wishy washy style means that competing factions within the Tories can rip themselves apart over his legacy once he’s gone, given there is almost no substance there. It isn’t simply a huge defeat Sunak is leading them towards - but confusion and disorder for years to come afterwards.

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