Sunak's mission to save his party now looks impossible

“We are still being punished for Johnson and Truss,” one minister said ruefully as the Conservative Party surveyed the wreckage of its two crushing by-election defeats at Labour’s hands in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire. One senior Tory who had canvassed in both contests said the “anger on the doorsteps” was not directed at Rishi Sunak but at “the last few years”. A Labour insider agreed, telling me: “The Tories are still paying the price for Partygate and the financial market crash.”

- ANDREW GRICE

Although Sunak – remarkably – still hasn’t given up hope of defying political gravity by holding on to power at next year’s general election, many Tories think privately that his mission is now impossible. Minds are already turning to who will succeed him as Tory leader, and to a bitter inquest to establish who were the detonators who blew up a party that has won the last four elections.

Boris Johnson will surely top the Tories’ list. After his thumping 2019 election victory, he had credible hopes of 10 years in Downing Street. Yet the characteristics of the man who bulldozed Brexit through parliament, the “not typical Tory” who wowed the red wall, would soon become self-destructive.

He was not brought down by Sunak, as Johnson’s acolytes unconvincingly still insist, but by himself. The Tories’ in-joke is true: he brought down three prime ministers – David Cameron, Theresa May, and... Boris Johnson. He got away with his lies for a large part of his life, including during the 2016 Brexit referendum, but they finally caught up with him on Partygate. That scandal highlighted another fatal flaw: he believed that the rules applied only to the little people, not to giants like him.

His casual relationship with the truth wasn’t just about Partygate. Johnson was accused by Dominic Cummings of secretly trying to arrange for wealthy Tory donors to pay for a £112,000 revamp of his Downing Street flat. The adviser on ministerial interests was furious to learn that Johnson had exchanged WhatsApp messages with one donor, but said that he had not breached the ministerial code.