Rishi Sunak Realises His "Allies" Are Not To The Right Of Him
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at a north London primary school (Alamy)
6 min read
Conservative MPs believe Rishi Sunak has decided he can afford to take on the right of his party as he prepares for what is set to be bumpy beginning to 2024.
According to one senior Tory, the Prime Minister has now realised who his "allies" are — and he no longer believes he's likely to find many of them among the further right factions of his party.
This senior Conservative MP, like the rest of Westminster, was reflecting on a week which saw the Prime Minister succesfully swerve a major, right-wing rebellion over his contentious Rwanda Bill following warnings from restless Tory backbenchers that the legislation did not go far enough to block legal challenges by asylum seekers facing deportation.
In the end, not one Conservative MP voted against the government, but it wasn't a totally comfortable affair for the Prime Minister — far from it.
Thirty-seven Tory MPs from the right-wing of the party abstained, and issued a clear threat to obstruct the legislation later in the parliamentary process if Sunak does not accede to their demands for significantly tougher provisions.
The malcontents are spread across a coalition of five Tory MP groups including the European Research Group, Common Sense and New Conservatives, whose memberships boast several leading figures on the right who support overriding the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) in order to enact the Rwanda policy.
While their decision to abstain on Rwanda rather than launch a full rebellion simply postpones the row until early next year, a number of Conservative MPs believe this week has demonstrated that it is a row which the Prime Minister is willing to have, and one he believes he will win.
TSunak has promised to listen to any ideas Tory MPs ideas have about how to improve the Rwanda Bill and make it more effective. But he has also told them in unambiguous terms, publicly and privately, that any changes must be within strict "parameters" and not breach international law – not least because Rwandan officials have warned that doing so would collapse the deal.
According to one former minister who met with the Prime Minister to discuss the legislation ahead of Tuesday's vote, Sunak stressed that he had studied the new Bill more than anyone else in the House of Commons and reached the conclusion that it was not possible to make it any tougher without breaching international law.
The Prime Minister has also been made aware that any move to significantly harden the bill would trigger a separate rebellion from dozens of MPs in the One Nation caucus of self-described moderate Conservatives, and probably result in a House of Commons defeat.
One close ally of Sunak sought to stress the importance of the One Nation wing of the party to the Prime Minister's strategy. They told PoliticsHome that its MPs, who are led by former Cabinet minister Damian Green, are already "deeply unhappy" with the legislation and that their reluctant support could yet be "broken".
Downing Street is understood to have noted the apparent influence of this wing of the party. One moderate Tory said the Prime Minister had belatedly realised that the One Nation caucus is fully behind his leadership despite their uneasiness with the Rwanda policy, whereas some MPs on the right of the party who would quite like to see him replaced before the next general election.
"Prime ministers are always slow to realise who their allies are," they said.
Sunak is also confident about taking on the right of the party because there is a belief that its power and organisation have diminished since the tumultuous Brexit years, when vehement Leavers in the ERG played a key part in ousting former prime minister Theresa May because they didn't think her proposed deal with the European Union was tough enough.
“The right isn’t what it used to be," remarked one senior Conservative.
They pointed to the House of Commons vote on Sunak's Windsor Framework deal for Northern Ireland earlier this year, when just 22 Conservative MPs voted against it following briefings from the right of the party that the number would be far higher, and the lack of serious opposition to his decision to water down plans to do away with EU laws.
Another Conservative MP told PoliticsHome that the ERG under the leadership of Mark Francois was a much less effective operation than had been under his predecessor Steve Baker, now a Northern Ireland minister, who "really knew how to crunch the numbers".
It was evident that the alliance of right-wing MPs was fundamentally split on how to approach Rwanda. On one hand were those who felt that they would be able to secure meaningful changes to the Bill later down the line, and on the other those who disagreed and wanted to force the Prime Minister to the drawing board by killing the Bill now.
No 10 and party whips are now confident that when the Rwanda legislation is put to further House of Commons votes early next year, they will be able to pick off potential right-wing rebels through cosmetic changes to the legislation, as well as by dangling possible rewards such as the chance to influence the next Tory manifesto. They are also stressing the importance of unity so close to an election.
"[Sunak] will read them the facts of life," one senior Conservative said.
An MP in that wing of the party disputed the idea that the government wasn't willing to discuss the significant changes they want, telling PoliticsHome the group had been "engaging very well" with No 10.
The right-wing alliance also dismisses the claim that they will not have the numbers to defeat the government if they do not get the changes they are pushing for. One source in the group said they will have more time to organise at future votes, unlike this week when there were just a few days between the government publishing the Bill and its Second Reading. It would take 29 Tory MPs to vote against the government to sink the legislation at future votes. Over 40 attended a meeting of the self-proclaimed "five families" earlier this week.
But regardless of whether Sunak manages to win over warring MPs in the Commons, getting it through the House of Lords is another matter.
There is already huge opposition among Tory peers to the government's plan to disapply human rights law and use the legislation to declare Rwanda a safe country, and figures in No 10 expect the legislation to be fundamentally dismantled when it reaches the upper chamber.
But when it comes to his own Conservative MPs, the Prime Minister appears to have landed on a New Year's Resolution: spend less time worrying about those on the right.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
