IF RISHI SUNAK IS TO SURVIVE, IT’S NO MORE MR NICE GUY

Rishi Sunak is under attack from two former PMs and Suella Braverman’s ragtag posse of supporters. If he is to survive, he needs to fight fire with fire...

RISHI SUNAK’S ally was incandescent. ‘I’m sick of them. These idiots from the Common Sense Group,’ he raged. ‘They’re basically running a kamikaze operation to destroy Rishi, destroy the Government and install Suella as Prime Minister. There’s only a handful of them, but the damage they’re doing is massive. It has to stop.’

It does. But who’s actually going to do the stopping?

Last week saw a triple-fronted assault on the Prime Minister by a rag-tag posse of his own MPs.

John Hayes, leader of that reactionary Common Sense backbench cabal and a key confidant of Suella Braverman, led the charge over soaring immigration figures. ‘When political parties come to power on a manifesto platform as clear as a pledge to reduce migration, people will say, “Well, did you do it, or didn’t you?”’ he warned darkly.

No sooner had Hayes slunk back into the Westminster shadows than up popped Liz Truss, recently returned from a visit to Taiwan where she’d issued a thinly veiled attack on the Government’s China policy. ‘As far as I’m concerned today’s [immigration] numbers are too high,’ she chided. ‘I want to see the Government making changes to bring down those numbers, because we know the problematic effect it’s having on local communities.’

Then, just as the Prime Minister thought he’d had enough of a handbagging at the hands of his recalcitrant predecessors, in barrelled Boris Johnson.

Enraged by the news the Cabinet Office had passed diary entries detailing his Chequers lockdown socialising to Thames Valley Police, he ordered his acolytes to take their toys from their prams and start hurling them through the windows of No10 Downing Street. Newspapers were briefed that Sunak was responsible for ‘stitching Boris up’. In response his supporters would go on strike. They might trigger a round of damaging by-elections. They could even initiate a fullblooded vote of no-confidence.

IT WAS all a fantasy, of course. The number of Boris diehards prepared to actually challenge Sunak can be counted on the fingers of Nadine Dorries’s left hand. Truss’s influence extends little further than her own imagination. The Common Sense Group consists of nothing more than Hayes, a couple of cranks and some sepiatinted memories of Mrs Thatcher.

But, in politics, perception is often more important than reality. And at the moment what the country sees is a Government that is starting to slowly pull itself apart and a Prime Minister who is presiding over a collapse of discipline within his own party.

This is in part a product of Sunak’s own strategy. Over the past seven days, there have been tentative signs his steely focus on reducing inflation and rekindling growth are bearing fruit. Consumer Price Index inflation fell below double figures for the first time since last summer, retail sales grew, and the International Monetary Fund sharply upgraded its GDP estimate for the UK.

But it will take time before these statistics align with household budgets. And in the meantime his mantra of, ‘We’re sticking with the plan, just give it a bit more time’ is creating a vacuum. One currently being filled by the spectacle of warring Tory MPs.

Another issue is Sunak’s personal style. He is a competent manager, but he is yet to prove himself a leader. As a result of which, when confronted, his instinct is to deflect and defuse rather than mount a demonstration of his authority. But now that authority is being directly challenged. And so the time has come for a show of strength.

First, he needs to break the umbilical cord binding Hayes and the Common Sense Group to his Home Secretary. ‘Suella doesn’t open her mouth without checking with John Hayes first,’ one senior backbencher told me. ‘They still have lunch every week and every speech she delivers is written by John.’

Allies of Braverman claim talk of her being nothing but a cipher for her long-standing political friend is underpinned by sexism. But a Minister who knows her says a bigger issue is the way Hayes deliberately overstates his influence to boost his status, and that of his group.

‘He trades on their friendship,’ he told me. ‘They don’t meet every week – she doesn’t have the time. And it’s not true he writes her speeches. A couple of weeks ago John was telling people he’d written her a speech to give to the National Conservatism Conference. So she contacted him and told him, “I don’t want you to send it to me. I don’t even want to see it.”’

But as long as Hayes is seen to be close to Braverman, the impression the pair are agitating against Sunak will prevail. Which is why the PM now has to give her a simple choice: say goodbye to John Hayes, or say goodbye to your Cabinet career.

He has to be similarly robust with Truss. Until recently there was residual sympathy among Tory backbenchers over the nightmare that was her 50-day premiership.

But her recent freelancing on foreign, economic and immigration policy – as PM she actually advocated liberalising immigration rules to boost growth – has seen patience run out. And as Sunak struggles to turn around his party’s fortunes, the last thing he needs is Truss reminding voters of the havoc she wreaked on their mortgages and pensions.

So again, he has to present her with an ultimatum: back my agenda, or prepare to meet the same fate as those former Cabinet Ministers who tried to oppose Boris in the run-up to the 2019 Election.

And the final message has to be delivered to Boris himself. The British people have had enough of his self-indulgent grandstanding. They are sick of seeing the man who boasted he had ‘taken back control’, blaming everyone else for his own mistakes and misfortune. They know that the person to blame for his political downfall is not some shadowy Civil Service blob, or Rishi Sunak’s perfidy. The person responsible for dragging down Boris Johnson is Boris Johnson.

But at the moment it seems Boris and his small clique of backbench cheerleaders have decided that if he’s going down, he may as well take the Tory Party, the Government and the country with him. And Sunak cannot just sit impotently and watch that happen.

So he has to fight fire with fire. He should make it clear that if Boris and his allies do go on strike against his agenda, they will immediately have the Conservative whip withdrawn, they will not represent the Conservative Party at the next election, and their political careers will be over.

He should also make clear that if there is any further trouble from Boris or his former Cabinet acolytes, those of them seeking preferment in his long-awaited Resignation Honours can whistle for them, because he will ensure their names are struck from the list.

AND he should further advise Boris that if he hears one more peep out of him before the next election, he will not merely pass any potentially incriminating WhatsApp messages and diary entries to Lady Hallett and her Covid inquiry, he’ll place them unredacted in the library of the House of Commons, for the whole world to peruse at its leisure.

A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to an MP who knows Sunak very well. ‘The thing about him is he’s basically a nice guy. And if you’re nice to people you can actually get quite a long way,’ she told me.

Possibly. But niceness can only get you so far. And the Prime Minister has reached the limit of what can be achieved by indulging and appeasing his internal opponents.

There is now only one way Rishi Sunak can reassert his authority and turn his fortunes around. No more Mr Nice Guy.