"High Energy" Rishi Sunak Prepares Pep Talks For Gloomy Tory MPs
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with Crystal Palace Chairman Steve Parish in south London (Alamy)
2 min read
Rishi Sunak will launch his latest bid to lift the spirits of despondent Conservative MPs this week after a dispiriting set of local elections left them with only one Tory mayor and around half the council seats they started with.
Over the next fortnight the Prime Minister will host two sessions with Tory MPs in Downing Street where the Conservative party's chief elections strategist Isaac Levido will deliver presentations on last week's results, as well as detail of their strategy going forward. MPs will also be invited to ask questions of their own.
The first session will take place tomorrow and the other a week on Wednesday, with Sunak and Tory party chairman Richard Holden also expected to be present. The whole parliamentary Tory party has been invited, but not all are believed to be planning to attend.
Ahead of the first meeting, No 10 was drawing up a spreadsheet of Conservative backbenchers who had RSVP'd yes, closely monitoring those making the effort to show their faces despite the deflated mood within the parliamentary party.
PoliticsHome understands the message from Sunak and Levido will essentially be "keep calm and carry on", but whether Tory MPs will be convinced by the outreach sessions remains to be seen.
Asked why they did not plan to attend, one former minister said "what's the point?".
The Conservative party lost over 500 seats in key battlegrounds across the country on Thursday, which most pollsters agreed pointed to a Labour majority at the next general election. The Tory party's claim that the results indicated a hung parliament was the most likely outcome of the next election, which the Prime Minister must call before the end of 2024, has been dismissed by the majority of experts as detached from the data.
The morale of Conservative MPs was dealt a further blow when Andy Street, seen in Tory circles as one of the party's greatest success stories, was ousted as the West Midlands Mayor.
The Prime Minister and his team remain steadfast in their belief that the beleaguered Conservative party's most likely route to an unlikely electoral recovery is through voters feeling the positive effects of the economy improving, and that this strategy still needs time to bear fruit. Sunak's allies are urging Tory MPs to keep faith in the plan.
"You can either be optimistic or you can be gloomy," one told PoliticsHome.
Another Government source told PoliticsHome Sunak was in a "high energy" mood today despite a difficult weekend for his leadership and its ominous implications for the Tory party's electoral prospects.
Sunak has sought to put the disappointment of last week's results behind him, spending Tuesday doing visits in London focussed on the economy and his plans to reform the welfare state.
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