IT may seem barely conceivable that the Tory Party would change their leader yet again, imposing a third unelected prime minister on the country in the course of a single parliament.
Yet speculation in Westminster, always near-feverish, is now focused on a new challenge to Rishi Sunak, a politician who certainly puts the “less” into “hapless.”
His tottering premiership has reached a crisis point over his prosecution of the plan he inherited to deport refugees to Rwanda.
Sixty back-bench Tories rebelled over his legislation to put a fresh breeze into the sails of this scheme, becalmed since the Supreme Court ruled its present iteration illegal. They wanted a still stiffer wind, blowing aside all considerations of legality as well as justice.
Most of the mutineers knuckled down when the final vote on the new law came around, but some are said to have submitted letters declaring no confidence in Sunak.
On the face of it, this is absurd. So far no-one has been deported to Rwanda, and even that country’s president seems to be now weary of the whole plan, to the point of offering Britain a refund on the money already transferred to his treasury, doubtless with an administrative charge deducted.
But even if the plan were to work to Sunak’s specifications, no more than a handful of destitute people would be put on planes to Africa, making nary a dent in the overall migration figures.
The vast majority of migrants arrive in Britain legally, and the rest are overwhelmingly asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and war. All have rights which no government concerned with staying on the right side of international law can ignore.
So Labour is correct to say the scheme is unworkable and a waste of money, but wrong to not also point out that it is cruel and immoral.
What exercises the Tory rebels on the populist right, however, is the plan’s symbolic value. It shows the party being tough on migrants, even if it is all for show, and key to thwarting the progress of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
The right is open in its disdain for international law and their nativism. Suella Braverman — clearly a contender to succeed Sunak whenever the opportunity arises — devoted much of her speech in the Commons debate to advocating a British withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, which she dubbed a “foreign court.”
She indicates a route which a large number of Tory MPs are presently unwilling to presently follow. However, the former home secretary, who is positioned as a 21st century Enoch Powell with added authoritarianism, can be sure of strong support among the Conservative Party membership, where the final leadership decision would lie.
Sunak is incapable of bridging these divisions, nor of setting out a plausible strategy for either governing or winning an election. He is the walking embodiment of the crisis of ruling-class politics.
His pitch now — it changes every month or two — is that he is a man with a plan, while Keir Starmer is planless. Alas for him, while it is true that Starmer offers nothing beyond a better-managed continuity, it is not necessarily true that it is worse to have no plan than it is to have one that obviously is not working.
Hence the clamour growing on the Tory back benches for yet another change at the top.
In truth, there is no-one available to spin Conservative dross into gold in the time required, but a new leadership contest would have one salutary consequence.
It would entrench the already developed understanding among the people that the Tories are utterly unfit to rule.
