Rishi Sunak and the Potemkin Plot

The rather flimsy 'plot' to oust the Prime Minister hides a much more worrying reality for the Prime Minister and his party

Will Rishi Sunak survive until the general election? That’s the question currently being asked in Westminster as polls show the Conservative party has dropped to levels of support last seen under Liz Truss.

In previous times the answer to this question would be quite simple. No Prime Minister leading his party to its worst ever result in a general election, with their own personal favourability ratings in the subarctic regions, could ever reasonably expect to make it all the way to polling day.

Yet these are not like previous times. Last night I stood outside the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs and watched as they strolled in and out to listen to the Prime Minister.

Given the extensive briefings of a “plot” to bring down Sunak, you might have expected there to have been a certain amount of drama at the meeting.

At the very least you might have expected significant number of Conservative MPs to personally confront Sunak about his disastrous handling of recent events.

You might also have expected his critics to brief journalists outside, with Cabinet big-hitters sent out to stick up for their man. At similar points under Truss, Johnson and May that is exactly what happened. None of this happened last night.

So what’s really going on here? Are we merely in the calm before the storm, or have the Conservative Party simply given up the fight? Here’s where I think we are.