The arrival of an electoral defeat that the polls announce as practically inevitable stimulates the audacity, almost the recklessness, of the hardest and most Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, always ready to rehearse a penultimate internal rebellion and shoot itself in the foot again.
Former minister Simon Clarke was the battering ram for the umpteenth attempt to overthrow Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night.
In a forum published in the
Daily Telegraph
, the reference newspaper for the hardline conservative wing, Clarke warned his fellow members of the result that awaits them at the polls - in principle, the general elections must be held at the end of the year. if they keep the current prime minister as a candidate.
“The harsh reality is that if Sunak leads the party in an election, we will be massacred,” said Clarke, who sweetened with good words what many colleagues have seen as a clear stab in the back: “Rishi has great strengths.
He is decent to the core, extremely intelligent and a tireless worker.”
But “all these virtues cannot compensate for two fundamental problems.
He doesn't have what the UK needs.
And he is not listening to what British citizens are demanding,” he concluded.
Clarke supported Sunak's candidacy to lead the Conservatives of the failed former prime minister Liz Truss.
After that brief and disastrous mandate, which sank the economic credibility of the United Kingdom, the then Minister of Housing and Local Government was expelled from the Government.
Since then, he has carried a resentment that led him to lead last week's rebellion against the law that toughened the deportations of immigrants to Rwanda.
But he is not alone.
Behind his maneuver is the politician who has taken upon himself, without being asked, the task of preserving the spirit of Brexit: David Frost, the EU exit negotiator most hated by Brussels, whose hostility was on the verge of derail that turbulent process.
Frost represents the denialism of the most recalcitrant
Tory
Eurosceptics , incapable of admitting the economic and geopolitical failure of that divorce and convinced that the blame for everything lies with politicians like Sunak, who gave in to pragmatism on issues such as immigration, lower taxes or the application of international law.
Last week, Frost released a new survey that was devastating and at the same time surrounded by mystery.
In theory, she had been entrusted to the YouGov company by a ghost organization without headquarters, statutes or social registration: Conservative Britain Alliance.
Nearly 14,000 citizens across the country had been consulted to reach various conclusions.
Firstly, the
Tories
could lose up to 200 seats (they currently have 349) to the Labor opposition (which today occupies 197).
But the most relevant thing about the survey was that in 375 constituencies, conservative voters assured that a new candidate willing to lower taxes and be even tougher on irregular immigrants could defeat Labor's Keir Starmer.
“I already know that many conservative deputies fear that a new change of leadership would give a ridiculous image.
But what could be more ridiculous than accepting the idea of sleepwalking towards inevitable annihilation, because we are not willing to listen to what the citizens are telling us so clearly? “Clarke wrote.
The slogan was clear.
The response of many great figures of the party, however, has been at least lukewarm, if not contemptuous and harsh against the former minister's proposal.
Behind the survey, which to circumvent the electoral legislation appeared to have been commissioned by Frost himself, is the suspicion that the usual conspirators are maneuvering, such as the millionaire fund manager Paul Marshall, who has financed the far-right television channel
GB News
.
1992 or 1997?
Conservatives have lately engaged in a historical-nostalgic debate that many of their critics see as a way of hiding their heads in the sand: 1992 or 1997?
Will Sunak deliver the same surprise that John Major did in 1992, against all odds, to obtain the Conservative Party's fourth consecutive victory?
Or will he suffer the same resounding defeat that Major suffered, five years later, against Tony Blair's Labor Party?
Polls have been clearing up that doubt for more than a year.
They all attribute to the opposition candidate, Starmer, an advantage at the polls of more than 20 percentage points.
But the different conservative tribes cling to doubt to maintain hope.
The right wing of the party still believes that a candidate of their level or even tougher would save them from the debacle.
The moderates and realists, who know that the electorate would not allow them to remove and replace another tenant of Downing Street without going to the polls, cling to the pragmatic Sunak as the last lifeline.
In the end, and against all odds, he has already been able to overcome several attempts at rebellion in just over a year.
Priti Patel, former Home Secretary under Boris Johnson and not exactly an admirer of Sunak, has accused Clarke of being “simple-minded, divisive and self-complacent”, and has joined the voices of those who have accused him of playing into the hands of the opposition. Labor.
Former defense minister Liam Fox has blamed Clarke for falling into “tribalism” whose sole aim is to destabilize the party.
Damian Green, one of the deputies who best represents the moderate wing of the
Tories
, has charged against a “wrong and unintelligent” maneuver.
Sunak has almost a year of ordeal ahead of him, and there is no guarantee that he will survive in office and finally be the candidate of the Conservative Party.
His main asset, however, is the widespread fatigue among many of the
Tory
deputies in the face of the continuous conspiracies and experiments promoted by those who one day already divided the party, and the entire United Kingdom, with the flag of Brexit. .
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