The Tories turn on Rishi Sunak, too many squeaky bums are on the line!

Right, so Rishi Sunak might have hoped to turn things around a bit this summer, but he’s failed miserably and his parliamentary party are sharpening the knives as yet another unwelcome Tory Party leadership challenge is being mooted, with reports that renewed letters of no confidence have gone in against him, which I’ll come on to in a moment. Now his supporters will still claim he's been unlucky, that he’s inherited an ice cream sundae of a shambles from Boris Johnson, with Liz the lettuce Truss being the cherry on top and as much as we as socialists, we on the left can agree with such a point, Sunak has come in seemingly riding on a wave of personal ambition, but without any real ideas of his own. In that respect he’s not unlike Keir Starmer. The unluckiness pointed to will be the scandals that have been beyond his control from Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs to Dominic Raab’s bullying. I would argue he’s set himself up for this fall to an extent by striving to lead the Tory Party and achieving it in the manner that he has, not a single person voted for him to be PM, not the party membership who had already rejected him, the brown-skinned man, in favour of the epically bad choice of Liz Truss, but of course he only got the gig in the end through being unchallenged. I still believe if anyone else had stood against Sunak that last leadership election time, if it had again gone to a vote of the membership, he’d have lost it, because the membership do not like him. I believe his ethnicity plays a part in that, the racism of the right wing no secret, their culture war on migrants as a viable electioneering tactic appeals to people of that mindset after all, but aside from denying his own party a say in his coronation, the general public were again denied their say in democracy. Now the naysayers will remind us we don’t have presidential elections here, we vote for local candidates, certain parties and they choose who leads them and although they are of course absolutely right, it nonetheless doesn’t sit right with the public. We still have a sense of wanting to see fairplay even if in reality we often get denied that by stealth, but blatant impositions of the nations leader is a really bad look and replacing Sunak now won’t change that. But aside from the background to a lot of Sunak’s problems, he’s been a very weak leader in his own right anyway. His five pledges which he stacked his reputation and his chances going into the next election have all been failures. Inflation is set to rise again next month according to predictions, the getting the national debt down pledge was a nonsense to begin with, we’re going to head into a winter period with new Covid variants on the rise once more, so getting NHS waiting lists down faces yet another obstacle on top of the underinvestment, continued privatisation via outsourcing and ongoing industrial action, with consultants and junior doctors now set to co-ordinate action going forwards, fighting to first and foremost rectify a service the Tories have rendered unsafe. Economic growth is for the birds in such a climate, teetering on the brink of recession once again and Sunak himself has now admitted he’s likely to fail on his pledge to stop the boats, because the illegal migration bill is a sick joke in violation of human rights legislation and is likely just going to herald attempts to see us ditch the human rights convention in order that they might continue their culture war against vulnerable people. But policy alone isn’t the sole extent of his failure and weakness. As much as Nadhim Zahawi and Dominic Raab’s issues preceded Sunak’s premiership, he failed to suspend them when said issues gained public prevalence, demonstrating how pitiful a leader he is, as small in power within his own party as he is in stature. Handing Suella Braverman the home secretary gig when he became leader was a surefire sign he has never really been in charge as he’s clearly beholden utterly to her ERG faction and that is very much the reason why despite her abject unsuitability, racism and frankly fascistic in my view tendencies, she’s still in post. Even members of his own parliamentary party are deplored by her, she’s been referred to as a real racist bigot by a member of her own side, so what does that say of Sunak, that he maintains support for her? Where else can we point to? Liz Truss of all people has said of him he has no plans for growth, ignoring the fact she caused the biggest economic calamity in recent years of course. He’s seen as having stabbed Boris Johnson in the back adding to his unpopularity within both the Tory membership and his parliamentary party. So many Tories are stepping down the public are seeing this and thinking, this guy is a loser and they don’t want to back him, very much the basis for Keir Starmer’s poll leads as they are, it isn’t so much Labour winning the next election, rather it is the Tories under Sunak losing it and that is becoming more obvious. Environmental protections are getting ditched, as our rivers stink and now developer protections are getting ditched, no plans to clean things up unto the 2060s but they’ll make them worse in the meantime, all of that of course a slow bit by bit bonfire of EU regulations since we Brexited, no benefits to it still yet seen, despite leave campaigners like Sunak extolling benefits that don’t exist. Sunak also abjectly doesn’t care about climate change and this is seeing Tory voters bleeding away to more conservationist orientated parties, chiefly the Greens. Above all political parties are judged on the economy and Brexit has trashed that, food prices up, energy bills, up fuel prices up and Sunak has simply thrown more bad money after bad, with bungs to offset our bills rather than renationalising services, as necessary, ideologically opposed to doing the right thing, something becoming more and more readily apparent to more people. So Sunak is politically inept, disliked by his own party from the membership up to parliamentarians and disliked by voters for his ongoing litany of failure, made worse by the fact nobody elected him to begin with. He’s done for, he cannot win and putting the icing on that particular cake is the departure of adviser Amber de Botten, who came into her advisory role when Sunak became leader just under a year ago and she’s off as well now. She’s used the now is the right time to move on excuse, which translates from political speak as this entire enterprise is a big s**t sandwich now and I’m off. And so we come to letters of no confidence going in as the Summer ends. It should come as no surprise, Sunak’s one year grace period coming to an end as it is and with an election needing to be called by January 2025 at the latest, the Tories can see the writing on the wall, they will lose with Sunak still leading them and so the letters go in. 52 apparently have gone in, if true, only 2 more are needed to trigger a no confidence vote in Sunak once his grace period ends on the 25th October. He’ll have this hanging over his head as a virtual certainty by then, I can only imagine how bad Tory Conference will be at the start of that month, with the wind still in Keir Starmer’s sails currently as things stand. If passed, and that’s a big if, such votes aren’t always successful, but given the scale of defeat the Tories currently face come the next election, who would rule that out? Yet having said that, the prospect of inflicting yet another unelected Prime Minister on the country may not work out for them, is there anybody left who could literally unite the party now, fractured and busted as it now is. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine anyone could do worse than Sunak now so is damage limitation enough of an impetus for change? What do you think, is another leadership contest in the Tory party in the offing? Will it make a difference? Who do you reckon might go for it if it passes? Have your say in the comments below, be part of the conversation, have your say. Thanks for watching, I hope you found the video useful, please like, share and subscribe if you did, more content out daily. Meanwhile here’s a vid recommendation where Sunak may feel his way out is to call the election early and there’s a few reasons why that might work out for him too and I’ll hopefully see you on the next vid. Cheers folks.