Tory critics urge Sunak to promote Right-wingers to ‘election war Cabinet’
Tory critics are urging Rishi Sunak to promote Right-wingers to an “election war Cabinet” after the local elections, which are predicted to deliver sizeable Tory defeats.
Two Tory MPs have endorsed the idea to The Telegraph, with Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Jenrick put forward as possible names to be in contention.
One said: “Lots of MPs are waiting until after the locals to get no confidence letters in. I would like to see the Prime Minister do a major reshuffle to bring in all sides of the party.”
There is frustration among figures on the Tory Right that Mr Sunak has packed his Cabinet with moderates. They argue that it does not represent the breadth of the Conservative Party.
Suella Braverman, who ran for the Tory leadership from the Right in 2022, was replaced as home secretary last year by James Cleverly, widely seen by colleagues as a centrist.
Lord Cameron, the architect of the party’s moderate rebrand to win back power after the New Labour years, was brought back as Foreign Secretary in November.
The second Tory MP said: “The last big reshuffle was seen as culling the Right of the party. Suella leaving was priced in, but with Cameron and others coming in it went down like a lead balloon and was very poor judgment.”
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor and an ally of Lord Cameron, has also floated the idea of a pre-election Cabinet reshuffle on his Political Currency podcast.
But asked about the idea over the weekend, some Tories critical of Mr Sunak’s leadership downplayed the impact it could have. One said: “It would not make an iota of difference.”
Downing Street is braced for tough local election results on Thursday, with as many as half of the Conservative council seats up for votes expected to be lost.
Mr Sunak appeared to prepare the ground for poor results, telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that “local elections are always difficult for incumbent parties”.
A band of Tory rebels are preparing to put renewed pressure on Mr Sunak’s leadership, but how widely their ambitions are shared by colleagues is unclear.
Some have proposed a five-point plan of policy changes – to end the junior doctors’ dispute with a 10-12 per cent pay rise offer, cut legal migration numbers, increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP by 2027, harden laws to lock up prolific criminals, and slash the welfare bill.
A Tory rebel source said: “The country has had enough of broken pledges and distant plans for change or bans they never asked for. It’s a plan for 100 days to show the Government is taking action and cares about what matters to the British people.”
Fresh debate about the policy direction of the Conservative Party will be triggered by the publication of a new report on Monday. The Future of Conservatism study, co-written by Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, and backed by Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, makes a number of proposals.
Writing for The Telegraph, Mr Timothy outlined some of the ideas floated, such as bringing back the Tory promise to reduce annual net migration into the tens of thousands, loosening planning rules to increase house-building and a strategy of “reindustrialisation”. The project is based at the think tank Onward.
He wrote: “We propose not only radically different policies, but a radically different way of thinking about economic policy itself.”
Meanwhile, on Sunday Tory figures moved to play down the significance of Dan Poulter’s defection to Labour, saying his criticism of Tory NHS policy was wrong. Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, rejected the idea that Mr Poulter could have been offered a peerage to defect, saying he was not aware that was the case.
