Just 45% of Conservative voters think that Rishi Sunak should lead the party into this year’s general election, according to new polling.
The Savanta survey for The Daily Telegraph suggested that 37% of the party’s backers believe someone else should take the helm and an incredible 18% “don’t know.”
Perhaps the biggest shock from this polling is that 45% of Tory voters still want Sunak to lead the party; that is, after a string of failures as predictable as they are embarrassing, especially when it comes to border control (or lack thereof) and his mismanagement of the economy.
But look at the politicians who are being touted as possible replacements, and you come to understand why many are reluctant to boot Sunak out.
The main one is Penny Mordaunt MP. It is often joked that she is only liked by the party’s ‘right’ because she once held a big sword. Like most jokes, there is a lot of truth in this.
Besides her blade-wielding capabilities, Mordaunt is a known appeaser of the transgender lobby, such that Spiked Online editor Tom Slater describes her as “one of a growing crop of Tory MPs who believe in nothing other than gender ideology.”
Other Tories are allegedly looking to Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, who can apparently be seen as a “unity candidate.” On speculation that Tugendhat is being lined up for the top job, Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the traditional conservative Bow Group think tank, dismissed him as yet “another establishment liberal,” and jibed that the party has “tried nothing else.”
Leadership speculation is just as rife within Reform UK, the former Brexit Party. Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage recently said he spends “hours every day” considering leaving his effectively meaningless post as Reform’s ‘honorary president’ and taking a more front-line role in politics, possibly as the party’s leader.
But Farage has also made it clear that he is quite happy in his current post as a GB News broadcaster. Indeed, in the same week that former U.S. president Barack Obama paid Sunak a “courtesy visit” in Downing Street, GB News broadcasted Farage’s latest interview with Obama’s presidential successor, Donald Trump, filmed in Mar-a-Lago.
Perhaps Farage is unwilling to give up the comforts of his current gig for what he well knows to be the slime of proper politics. However, it is more likely that he is simply waiting for the right moment when he can inflict the most harm on the Conservatives. And by that time, it is most likely that Sunak will be long gone.
