There are a number of MPs – some who should know better – who would like you to think that Sir Simon Clarke’s declaration of war on Rishi Sunak’s Premiership had come from some sort of maverick loner. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To wind back to last week, there was a sense that Rishi Sunak had crushed the rebellious right of his party when only 11 of them could find the backbone to rebel against his flawed Rwanda Bill despite all the sound and fury leading up to it. But by yesterday (Tuesday) it was clear that Sunak’s gloating victory lap had not gone down well.
The whiff of revolt was back by lunchtime yesterday when a now former Rishi Sunak loyalist MP wandered up to Express.co.uk ashen faced with a question: “How are we going to turn around these polls?”
The MP in question looked utterly broken and depressed and quickly elaborated.
“The problem is that nobody likes Rishi. He could literally find the cure for cancer and end all the wars in the world and still nobody would like him.”
The clear conclusion that the 20 plus points deficit with Labour could only be resolved with a change of leader and this from an MP who just days ago would have said another leadership contest was “stark raving mad”.
By late afternoon the two chairs of the New Conservatives Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates – both of whom were in the 11 to hold their nerves and vote against the Rwanda Bill – were holding court in middle of Portcullis House on the parliamentary estate.
Around 5.30pm Express.co.uk was given a vague brief: “It’s going to be a busy night. There’s something coming. It is worth staying up for.”
A few calls later it was claimed that “a big name would be calling for Rishi Sunak to resign in the Telegraph”.
The question was: “Who?”
There was immediate speculation that it could be Lee Anderson, who quit as deputy chairman last week over the Bill was known to be deeply unhappy about the state of the party. While he also had written for the Telegraph it was quickly apparent that he was not the big name, although he had intervened in that way it would have been devastating.
Suella Braverman was also known not to be be the one and it later emerged that it was Sir Simon Clarke, a leading member of the Conservative Growth Group who had become the first pebble in what he most hope develops into an avalanche to oust the Prime Minister.
It was interesting how the “five families” still appeared to be working together. Clarke more from the CGG was ooperating with the New Conservatives.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Common Sense Group (of the five families) Sir John Hayes, whose protege is leadership hopeful Suella Braverman, had dinner the night before with cabinet minister Michael Gove, whose protege is leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch. They are both old friends so their meeting could well have been coincidental.
But as news of a demand for Sunak to quit began to circulate a group of very unhappy Red Wall Tory MPs gathered Parliament to discuss going out for a chat.
The conversation ranged from morose to gallows humour. None of them expected to be back after the election and all of them thought that the party had lost direction or any sense of purpose. They had all been Boris Johnson loyalists but most of them had wanted to give Sunak a go.
There was no surprise that one of their number was calling for the Prime Minister to go and no suggestion that Clarke should not do it or was even wrong.
But the predominant joke was what they would be doing with their “redundancy” when voters kicked them out.
Meanwhile, as news broke of Clarke’s statement, there was a noticable silence from cabinet ministers in terms of Tweeting out support for Sunak. Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Penny Mordaunt and other Twitter accounts remained undisturbed.
Instead Sunak relied on veterans – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Dame Priti Patel, Sir Liam Fox and Sir David Davis – to come to his aid.
But there is something nagging about the fact it is Sir Simon Clarke calling for Sunak to go.
To put it in context Clarke is literally the neighbouring MP to Rishi Sunak in the north of England, their constituency boundaries touch. The two spent just over a year together as numbers 1 and 2 in the Treasury. There is probably no MP who has worked motre closely with Sunak than Clarke.
Yet last night it was Sir Simon, one of last week’s 11 “Rwanda Spartans” who rebelled against Sunak’s Bill, who was the one to say what so many of his colleagues are thinking that the Prime Minister is leading them to a disastrous defeat and needs to go.
Yet when in the summer of 2022 Clarke had a choice he picked Liz Truss having refused to resign from Boris Johnson’s government with Sunak. In turn Sunak refused to appoint him to his cabinet after Truss was ousted.
One source in the know told Express.co.uk: “The problem for Sunak is he does not like people telling him he is wrong. Simon did that as Chief Treasury Secretary and Sunak never forgave him. He likes yes people too much.”
This may explain why one of his closest allies Craig Williams, his parliamentary private secretary, was reportedly telling fellow Tory MPs that the right’s rebellion over Rwanda had made it very hard to win the election.
One rebel said: “If they really believe that they are totally deluded. They are grasping for excuses.”
Clarke has been included in the list of possible alternative leaders. But one test of that might be whether others are willing to follow him in declaring Sunak needs to go or whether the fear of oblivion has paralysed them into inaction.
