Comment
HARRY COLE
The cry is spreading – go MUCH harder on immigration Rishi or risk a bitter Tory rebellion…general election or not
Senior Tory members want the PM to double down on immigration - both illegal and legal
ON a freezing cold January day in an election year, a once-popular Chancellor was struggling in his new role of unpopular Prime Minister.
At the tail end of more than a decade in power, his party was riven and tired, with the public ready for change.
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Behind him, the green benches were stuffed with ex-ministers who thought they knew better, and MPs hyperventilating about their seats.
Two ex-Cabinet ministers had had enough — Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt went public with their call for a vote of confidence in Gordon Brown’s leadership in an open letter to all their colleagues.
The 2010 Hoon/Hewitt coup was a disaster. That great clunking fist crashed down on the desk for one last battle, with the Cabinet wheeled out to strangle the amateur attack — even though half of them agreed that they were sleepwalking into a pounding from the voters.
But in the end, the utter insanity of regicide just months before polling day trumped those concerns.
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As Hoon was humiliatingly forced to admit live on TV that evening, if he had been Brutus, Caesar “would still be alive”.
Within a matter of months they were all out on their ears.
Fast forward 14 years and the Tories had their own Hoon/Hewitt moment this week, peering over the cliff, inflicting plenty of damage in the process — but pulling back from actually toppling yet anther Prime Minister.
A massive, and mysteriously paid for, YouGov poll that pointed to a defeat worse than 1997 meant the pre-Christmas plotting among a handful of Boris die-hards and Suella fans spread through the Tory Right and even into the minds of some ministers.
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Except none of the plotters had the balls to say publicly what they had spent the week discussing behind closed doors.
Instead, a proxy war over the PM’s Rwanda bill was fought through the division lobbies, as 60 Tory MPs openly defied a three-line whip to try to tighten it up.
They stepped back from a knockout blow by torpedoing the entire legislation — but that nuance is unlikely to matter to a bemused public.
Most of them seem to treat the Tories these days in much the same way you ignore a crackpot shouting on a bus.
In the end, 11 voted against it, with 18 more sitting on their hands.
'Game is already up’
But the scale of the rebellion on the amendments will not be lost on No10 — 60 being larger than the number of letters required to trigger a vote of no confidence in the PM.
Shows of strength don’t get more obvious than that, and some of them have already put their letters in.
And those numbers also point to the famously fractious Right-wing Tories having got their ar**s in gear as well as burying some long-standing hatchets.
Plotters say they have 30 letters in already, but that can always be taken with a pinch of salt.
However, losing London and West Midlands mayoralties and a pasting at the local elections on May 2 is the next very obvious flashpoint for Sunak’s premiership.
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No10 want to start talking about the economy — with the Rwanda bill now kicked upstairs for legal eagle lords to shred for a few weeks.
It’s not likely to return to the Commons until at least April — if at all in any recognisable form.
The battle will return another day, with instead Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt set to start hyping tax cuts in the run up to the Budget.
But a Government that is polling at just 20 per cent does not really get to set the terms of debate.
As ex-Levelling Up Secretary Sir Simon Clarke put it: “Nobody can believe this issue will go away if we simply stop talking about it.”
As one leading rebel tells me: “The choice cannot be simply sitting back and waiting for that YouGov poll to become electoral reality.”
RISHI RISKS REBELLION
Another adds: “That poll was somehow liberating for some MPs, if they know the game is already up, they are happy to consider braver action.”
When quizzed about what that actually means, their answers are a little less clear.
But the “do something” cry is spreading — even very senior members of Sunak’s administration agree. They want him to go much harder on immigration — both illegal and legal.
Far from run away from the conversation, double down. And if he’s not prepared to do so . . . then it will be more than 30 letters going in.
Rishi may have survived but there will be more and more weeks like this.
The plotting on the eve of a general election may look illogical, it may well be illogical — but the real danger for Sunak is perhaps they just don’t care about losing.
His team should look to Gordon Brown’s survival that icy day 14 years ago and start throwing some punches of their own.
Commons row
THERE was a row in the Commons after the Government refused to delay proceedings on Tuesday to allow MPs and staff to attend former
Speaker Betty Boothroyd’s memorial service at Westminster Abbey.
When things did get under way, all the microphones and cameras went down and the House had to be suspended for an hour anyway.
“The old girl still haunts the place,” one doorkeeper joked.
HEAD’S COURT CASE IS LAW-FARE
LET’S not pretend a High Court challenge against Britain’s “strictest headmistress” is anything other than politically motivated law-fare.
Katharine Birbalsingh earned the title after founding one of the nation’s best free schools.
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The Left hate it because it challenges their sacred cows and don’t like Birbalsingh because she’s a bit right-wing.
She’s banned ALL form of prayers in the classroom in the name of multiculturalism, and a desire to genuinely integrate pupils from a range of backgrounds.
But the school has been hit with abuse, bomb threats and lots of shouting about Islamaphobia.
And now it is being sued for discrimination by a Muslim pupil.
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Sadiq Khan announced this week he is ditching requirements for minicab drivers to speak English – again in the name of multiculturalism.
I know which one will actually succeed.
Philp's passionate case
l WOULD not take betting tips from junior minister Chris Philp.
Wheeled out on to the airwaves in the wake of the Tory Rwanda rebellion, Philp made a passionate case that the PM has emerged stronger rather than weaker from the latest dramas.
It was almost as convincing as his boast just hours after Liz Truss’s mini-Budget disaster that it was “great to see sterling strengthening”.
The Pound hit an all-time low just days later.
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