The week hasn’t got off to the best start for the Tories, as turmoil within the left and right of the party over Sunak’s new Rwanda bill grows. One Nation Tories are telling whips they will be voting with Labour in a bid to kill the bill, while those on the right (namely Braverman and, err, Jenrick) are also set to reject it. Growing discontent in the party has been reflected in the polls in a major way…
The last time to the Tories managed to garner 30% in the polls was late-September 2022. Since then, there have been 62 consecutive polls, with 60 of them giving the Tories a measly score in the 20’s and two of them 19% – the worst extended run of poll ratings in the party’s history. CCHQ is hoping that there will be a bump in the polls before the next election. Though if their ratings continue to plummet as they have been, they might want a rethink before things get even worse…
James Harding’s lawfare attack on the Tories has flopped for a second time this year. Guido readers will remember that the former Times editor and BBC News director has been trying since 2022 to sue the Tories for refusing to give out information about its voting membership. Tortoise Media’s second attempt at judicial review has been comprehensively rejected. Justice Fordham also ruled that Tortoise has to pay full costs of £30,000, over double what Harding’s lawyers argued would be “proportionate” costs. The Tories are celebrating the “latest in a line of welcome judgments”…
The court judgement lays out that this is a “clean knock-out blow” at the permission stage as “the claim lacks viability because its public function premise is unsustainable. That is the end of the case.” Back to the drawing board for Harding…
Read the full scathing judgement below:
Rishi Sunak’s week didn’t get off to the best start, tanking in the polls to a point lower than Liz Truss, prompting the Daily Star to dub him: “even worse than The Lettuce“. It’s not just the government’s media game which is spiralling out of control. Last night Number 10 was hit by an unexpected defeat in the Commons – the first of Sunak’s premiership and the first on a three line whip since the Brexit battles of 2019. A vote on a Labour amendment to speed up compensation for victims in the infected blood scandal passed by 246 votes to 242. Twenty-three Tory MPs sided with Labour, defying the Prime Minister…
In a failed attempt to stave off the rebellion, ministers promised a last-minute tweak of their own that would lay the “legal groundwork” for a body to swiftly compensate victims. The rebels included a cross-section of the party rather than a faction. The whips had previously threatened to withdraw the whip from any rebels – which, having failed to materialise, has compounded the knock to Sunak’s crumbling authority. The first domino of rebellion has fallen…
It looks like it’s not just Starmer who’s looking to woo Conservative Party members this week. The Tories are pushing ahead with the return of actual membership cards and are asking members to vote on what design they want. The cards were scrapped in 2020 in favour of flimsy paper certificates to save the environment, or something like that. Members have been given the choice to vote between Union-waving, 1920s-revival, or two blue splodge options. Art at its finest…
CCHQ is chuffed the poll has had so much interest. Guido hears over 10,000 responses have been received so far and the Conservatives.com website crashed from excess traffic. Maybe members should be asked to chime in on policy too…
Glum reading for the Tories today, as a new poll on 2019 Tories from J.L. Partners for Bloomberg shows Rishi is doing even worse than his short-lived predecessor Liz Truss. Just 59% of 2019 Tories say they’ll vote Conservative, compared to 63% under Truss and 74% last summer. 18% of those voters have defected to Labour. Sunak has lost a whopping 520,000 votes since this October…
The study reports that Reform UK is partly to blame for the Tories’ losses, taking 15% of 2019 Tory votes, triple those who have switched to LibDems. Rishi’s failure to get a hold of immigration numbers have led 1.5 million people to support the anti-immigration party Reform, piling on the pressure for Sunak to gets flights to Rwanda off the ground next year. No doubt Number 10 will hold onto the small glimmer of hope from the study that says around half of undecided voters are expected to vote Tory on election day. Though the “shy Tory” effect is hardly enough to bank on…
Colonel Bob Stewart becomes the latest Tory MP to announce he is standing down, his ultra marginal Beckenham seat will be all to play for at the general election. The colourful colonel will be much missed.
The MP for Beckenham was recently found guilty of a supposedly racially aggravated public order offence. During a heated exchange after being accused of being corrupt – “Bob Stewart, for how much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime?” he told the protestor: “Go away, I hate you. You make a lot of fuss. Go back to Bahrain…. Now shut up, you stupid man.” Many thought the magistrate Paul Goldspring was harsh in finding the exchange to be a racially aggravated public order offence.
Bob was always outspoken and an old school traditional Tory. His association has begun the search for a new candidate…
