Rishi’s Rwanda bill is beginning to feel a lot like Brexit…but this time Boris Johnson won’t be riding to Tories’ rescue
TOMORROW is the fourth anniversary of the biggest election earthquake in a generation.
Only one party leader will mark that milestone with a punchy speech about Brexit and lowering migration — and it is not Rishi Sunak.
On December 12, 2019, the Tories had the chance to put to bed years of bickering, plotting about leadership challenges and writing more letters than a class of schoolkids to Father Christmas.
Banished were the absurdly labelled “Star Chambers” of lawyers giving a gladiator-like thumbs up or down to flagship policies.
Factions such as the European Research Group on the right and the One Nation gang on the left, could have melted away under the storming majority secured that day.
Gone too, the “Pizza Plots” and “Curry Coups” or any other form of fast food that seemed to attach itself to insurrection in early 2019.
But like the Ghost of Tories Past, it seems plenty on the government benches are living in a scheming dream world.
Once again the fate of a Prime Minister’s flagship law — and what is left of their dwindling authority — is in the hands of a so-called “Star Chamber”.
At noon today the great and good of the Tory right will gather in Parliament’s Thatcher Room to give their verdict on the Rwanda bill, and with it whatever tiny chance there is of Sunak keeping his grip on power at the next election.
It used to be just the ERG that caused Tory PMs sleepless nights, now they have the young Turks of the New Conservatives, the old fogeys of the Common Sense Group and the die-hard Liz Trussite Growth Group to contend with too.
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Economic firestorm
Six hours later, the left of the party, or the equally flashy titled “One Nation” group, will gather to plot their own assault.
Never big enough in number to actually get their own leader in, they use their limited power to try to anchor Tory leaders in the centre ground.
Sound familiar? It’s beginning to look a lot like Brexit . . .
But the Conservatives’ self-indulgent post-referendum civil war was possible because the official Opposition under Corbyn had vacated the pitch.
It was also possible to oust sinking Theresa May because there was a viable alternative candidate to take office.
Sick of the plotting, large swathes of MPs held their noses and the cry of “send for Boris” went up.
But four years, a pandemic and an economic firestorm later, the world is a very different place.
There is no king across the water this time, there is no cavalry arriving over the hill to swing this Waterloo.
Tory MPs ousted Truss as bloodlessly as possible because Sunak, though rejected by party members, in their eyes stood ready to steady the ship.
Who is their alternative leader today?
Boris Johnson is not coming back.
Why would Kemi Badenoch want the job for a matter of weeks before the pressure to call an election would become unbearable
Those “pasta plotters” — who it is claimed spent last week in a Westminster Italian working out how Jungle Favourite Nigel Farage could ride to the party’s rescue — have had too much overpriced Primitivo.
And those pushing for a “single-issue election” over Rwanda might look to 2017 to see how that goes.
As May’s own pollster James Johnson says: “She set off to hold a Brexit election and it ended up being a vote on public services.”
Only one alternative leader can benefit from yet another unending bout of Tory letter- writing, and that is Sir Keir Starmer.
Migration goolies
Tomorrow he will turn the screw, using the anniversary of the 2019 election to kick the Tories in the migration goolies . . . hard.
“Seven years they’ve had to make Brexit work,” he will say in his speech.
“But every time they run up against a choice of whether to raise skills and improve working conditions or issue visas, they choose higher migration. It’s who they are.”
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It remains to be seen if swathes of undecided voters will buy the Starmer conversion from second-referendum poster boy, who once claimed there was a “racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.
But the fact he even has the space to make the case should be a long-overdue reality check for navel-gazing Tory MPs.