The secret plan to save Rishi Sunak from being ousted as PM after inevitable battering in May’s local elections
A few letters from rebels have trickled in this week but Sunak’s critics are well short of the numbers required for a challenge
THERE is a plan afoot to save Rishi Sunak from being ousted after the inevitable battering in May’s local elections.
Currently the PM would face a wounding vote of no confidence if just 15 per cent of MPs wrote to 1922 Committee boss Sir Graham Brady saying it is time for yet another new leader.
History tells us that once the letters are in, even if the PM wins the anonymous ballot of all Tory MPs, then they will not see out the year.
May limped on for another six months. Boris barely two.
Now I can reveal that senior party figures are trying to put a finger on the scale to avoid Sunak getting bulleted before the general election due this year.
Powerful Conservative backbenchers, including the Treasury Select Committee chairman Harriett Baldwin, are pushing the 1922 to increase the threshold for a contest to 50 per cent — meaning a hefty 174 MPs would have to go nuclear.
Owlish committee boss Sir Graham Brady has let it be known he is not averse to the idea but any rule change risks inflaming tensions in the already tinderbox party.
‘Party is in a fog’
A few letters have trickled in this week but Sunak’s critics are well short of the numbers required for a challenge.
Rebel ringleader Sir Simon Clarke, who at 6ft 7in looms large over the pint-sized PM, has been nicknamed by colleagues the “stalking giraffe” rather than the traditional stalking horse.
But his attempt to oust the PM bombed this week.
The agoraphobic Teessider found himself figuratively exposed in a great open space after going public with his call for Sunak to go this week.
But no other Tory MPs rallied to his banner — and I hear that the PM has a very unlikely friend to thank for making sure Sir Simon’s putsch flopped.
At 5 Hertford Street, an exclusive Tory watering hole in Mayfair, Liz Truss was holed up with her dwindling band of a dozen or so supporters on Tuesday evening.
As the white wine flowed, the ex-PM told her team “changing the leader will not affect the result” and warned none of her supporters to put in letters.
She denies claims she told the dinner she wants Sunak “to own the defeat” and is instead focussed on rebuilding the party in a more libertarian hue from opposition.
When her fan boy Sir Simon went over the top that night, Truss was quick to let it be known publicly she was not on board.
Yet despite the barrage he got after putting the boot in, plenty of ministers and even loyalist MPs agree with his warning that Sunak is flying blind.
One moderate Tory MP, who was key to ousting Boris and was a diehard Sunakista, has been telling friends “the Conservative Party is in a fog.”
They added: “I can’t help but think when that fog clears it will turn out I am standing in the middle of the A1.”
The rebels are eyeing the second week of May to strike.
And here is how they think they can do it: The letters would go in that week — a big ask.
Then, given recent precedent, they think Rishi would walk rather than fight the vote of no confidence — a second even bigger ask.
The feeling amongst wiser heads is that the PM would not call an immediate general election, given it would put the Tory party in the ground for a decade.
Instead, as California beckons for Rishi, the men in grey suits would go see Penny Mordaunt — who is determined for a third tilt at the top job.
After she crashed and burned against Truss in the summer of 2022 and failed to get the numbers to run against Sunak, I’m told the case would be made for her to not embarrass herself again and take a nice big Cabinet job instead — and focus on her tight seat.
That third, and perhaps the biggest ask yet, would leave the stage clear for Kemi Badenoch to seize the crown.
The new PM would then name the date of an election on the steps of 10 Downing Street on day one — insisting Starmer is a dud and beatable, but the British people deserve a real choice.
December 12 is a Thursday again this year, with the five-year anniversary of Boris Johnson’s landslide having been mooted, leaving Kemi six months to try to stem the bleeding.
Friends say Badenoch is genuinely torn — acutely aware the Tories would probably still lose the next election, but confident she could do a much better job than Sunak.
Tonight her spokesman said: “She is happy where she is and supports the PM.”
But with Sunak currently polling at just 20 per cent, you have to wonder how long before Cabinet stop insisting everything is hunky dory.
LABOUR LOSING ITS ED ON ECO COST
DOWNING Street’s hirsute election guru Isaac Levido told the Cabinet this week that “Starmer and Labour seem to have more positions on their £28billion spending spree than the Kama Sutra”.
After The Sun revealed the Labour leader has decided to ditch the landmark pledge to borrow that sum for massive green investment, the Shadow Cabinet has fallen out.
Greenie Ed Miliband has “gone bananas”, according to one source, with Labour insisting it is still committed to the idea of a massive investment surge in eco projects to try to kick-start economic growth.
But how they are going to pay for it continues to dog the party.
Yet in fact the sum they actually need to find is around £18billion, given the Government has already earmarked around £10billion for similar plans.
Labour insists it won’t put up taxes to fill the black hole – but the Tories smell blood.
While publicly the opposition says it is fully committed to the £28billion figure, I’m told it will finally be put to the sword in the days after March’s Budget.
AFTER Whitehall a**e-kicker Sue Gray jumped from the Cabinet Office to Labour, I hear another civil service grand panjandrum is eyeing a return to the fray for the reds.
Soft-Brexit supremo Olly Robbins quit SW1 for a massive banking job after his botched attempt to negotiate a Brexit deal under Theresa May.
But pals say he has unfinished business and has never hidden his desire to be Cabinet Secretary.
Could it be a two-pronged approach – with a big cosy job like National Security Adviser lined up in the meantime?
ARISE, Lord Windbag?
Ian Blackford, the roly-poly ex-SNP leader in Westminster, is said to be eyeing a seat in the House of Lords after being ousted by the Young Turks in his party.
“Not a f***ing chance” says my Nationalist snout.
New boss Stephen Flynn has put the kibosh on his predecessor’s dream, insisting the SNP will always stand by its no peerages rule.