'More rats will leave Sunak’s sinking ship before the next General Election'

16 July 2023 , 21:12

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Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace is to stand down (Image: Julian Hamilton/Sunday Mirror)

Cancelling early his Cabinet prime membership, Ben Wallace won’t be the last rat to abandon the Conservative sinking ship. A Tory former Minister staying to fight and lose power at the General Election named to me three more members of Rishi Sunak’s frontline team he expects to follow the Defence Secretary by jumping overboard.

The mass Cabexit could be higher, he sighed, when few of his SW1 colleagues expect to win a bloodbath anticipated in Autumn next year, Conservatives unfortunate to survive in Parliament facing the unappetising grind of opposition after 14 years of perks and privileges.

Tetchy Wallace, who embarrassed himself and Britain by crassly moaning he isn’t an Amazon arms delivery service for Ukraine, gains a head start in leaving the Ministry of Defence in a likely September reshuffle.

Rishi Sunak has by-elections on his mind (Getty Images)

After the election cull the competition will be fiercer for fat, juicy, money-spinning jobs and Wallace, claiming he fancies a break from politics, will have a head start by going early instead of waiting or seeking a fresh seat to replace a constituency put on death row. His pre-announced departure makes it 47 Tory MPs deciding to go in a thumping Westminster vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister and a listing UK Conservative Government holed below the waterline.

This Thursday voters in three abandoned Tory seats – fleeing liar Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge and South Ruislip hideout in the London burbs, Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshireand Somerton and Frome in Somerset – deliver their verdicts. Labour expects to take the first two Tory strongholds, the Liberal Democrats the third. Toppling blue fortresses isn’t easy or guaranteed yet the cannon, grappling irons and scaling ladders are a flatlining economy, falling living standards, rising interest rates, painful inflation, lengthening NHS waiting lists and Channel boats arriving in record numbers.

Boris Johnson attacks Rishi Sunak's failure to send fighter jets to Ukraine

Incompetent Sunak failing his five tests is a collective P45. Because handing £7bn inheritance tax cuts to wealthiest households like his own, a Tory wealthfare handout first promised in 2007 and never delivered, would backfire spectacularly in 2024 if they’re desperate enough to put it in a manifesto.

Quitting Wallace, a former Army captain, is a national changing of the guard. Sunak’s lieutenants read the writing on the national wall. No wonder dozens are jumping before they’re pushed by the electorate. What was a trickle is now a flood ahead of an electoral tsunami.

Kevin Maguire