'Tories sinking feeling as 58 MPs announce plans to abandon Conservative ship'

18 February 2024 , 21:51

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So many Tories jumping before they’re pushed is a damning vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister

Tory rats abandoning the sinking Conservative ship is a better guide to the next general election than their two lost by-elections.

Some 58 Tory MPs have already announced they are quitting next time around but the figure could top 100 – by some counts even 150. Either way, the number will easily exceed the 72 who quit in 1997, when Tony Blair took power in a landslide.

So many Tories jumping before they’re pushed is a damning vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. One Conservative former minister told me, only half-joking, he feared he’d be the sole survivor and forced to be Opposition leader, deputy, Shadow Chancellor and Chief Whip by himself.

“We used to jest in the smoking room that counting who will stay was quicker than naming those leaving but not any more,” he cried. Colleagues aren’t fools. Nobody wants to be rejected by the electorate while many don’t wish to return to the thankless, hard grind of opposition after 14 years in government.

“I’m going to be sending scores of goodbye and sympathy cards.” PM Rishi Sunak’s whistling to keep his own spirits up is conning nobody.

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The Tories are caught in a vice between Labour on the Left and Nigel Farage’s hard Right anti-migrant Reform UK. The Tories will lose 39 seats if Reform polls 10%, 47 if they get 12% and 63 at 15%, according to the think-tank More in Common. That’s more seats in the bag for Starmer because 59% of the hard Right party’s backers voted Conservative in 2019, and only 5% of them Labour.

Labour seizing two Conservative constituencies in by-elections after a difficult few moments for Starmer (the £28billion Green power dumping and Rochdale anti-semitism shambles) illustrates that the mood for change is probably unstoppable.

When Starmer hits a bad patch, it’s still much worse for recessionary Sunak. With doomed Tories voting with their feet, complacency is a real danger for Labour.

Keir Starmer, thumping the air in triumph, is struggling to keep his own feet on the ground, never mind those of Labour’s shadow ministers, MPs and Commons candidates.

But the bigger enemy is voters thinking change is a done deal – that there’s no need to vote in May, October, November or whenever, a party source has confided.

So Labour’s priority for the spring and perhaps the summer must be creating a sense of excitement around their own party winning – rather than the dismal Tories losing.

Kevin Maguire