‘What could possibly go wrong?' - An insecure Prime Minister discussing security to an insecure nation was never likely to be a recipe for success
There were many ironies in Rishi Sunak’s speech at the Policy Exchange earlier this week. The Prime Minister appeared to suggest that the nation’s security is contingent upon voting Conservative in the next election.
This is audacious, especially considering that just to start, many of his own MPs are themselves feeling terrified and insecure.
In my previous piece, I highlighted a YouGov poll conducted last week that indicated, in its worst-case scenario for the Conservatives, that Sunak’s party could be reduced to as few as 13 MPs.
‘The misery is priced-in’ - the noise is as distracting as ever, but the real problems remain for Sunak as they do for the rest of the country
Recovering from his party’s local election drubbing, Sunak was keen to try and placate despondent MPs by sending them letters inviting them to No. 10 to help them understand CCHQ’s current strategy. Or ‘the plan’ - Sunak’s grand scheme to turn the polls in the Conservatives’ favour against all odds and go on to win the next election.
CCHQ’s response to this provides a crucial indicator of how anxious the Conservatives are following the local election results. Such an outcome - of 13 MPs - is now seen as a reasonable possibility by Downing Street.
They have, after all, fundamentally changed their entire campaign strategy in response. This shift appears aimed not only at boosting depleted morale but also at avoiding the grave mistake of underestimating this potential outcome - an error that could rival the disastrous misjudgment made by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada when it was effectively wiped out in 1993.