Familiar faces on the right met in Bournemouth to pour scorn on the government. And they can certainly make the PM’s life harder
that is becoming the main concern for many on the Tory right. In reality, even MPs close to Johnson find it hard to envisage him making a comeback before an election – and also struggle to see him wanting to take on the thankless task of leading the party in opposition. Yet the more significant concern for Sunak is the personnel who attended the Bournemouth bash – and the threat they pose to his plan to restore order to a party that has torn itself apart in recent times.
Jenkyns said some of her Tory colleagues belonged in the Lib Dems. Stewart Jackson, the former MP and now Tory peer, said Johnson’s mandate had been thrown away. There were other notable rumblings in the last week. Guto Harri, Johnson’s former communications chief, revealed in a podcast that the former prime minister had been so angry at what he saw as Sunak’s betrayal in helping to topple him that he wanted to send him a video calling him something unrepeatable.
These concerns on the right show the tightrope Sunak is walking. They are also coming despite the fact that one of the few political positives for the PM is the absence of a real electoral threat on the Tory right flank. The Reform party, created from the Brexit party, performed poorly where it ran in this month’s local elections. “Without Nigel [Farage] coming back, I just don’t see that there is a real threat there,” said one senior Tory sympathetic to the idea of Johnson’s return.
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