TORY PANIC: They’re only trying to call off the Election! Here’s how.

Right, so normally I wouldn’t give the comic book that passes itself off as a newspaper called the Daily Express a second glance, it’s content often the most far-fetched silliness going, however, a story they’ve carried is getting carried by other right wing sources as well, so perhaps on this rare occasion they’re onto something and what they are onto is absolute Tory panic as overnight it is being reported that a group of incandescent Tories are racing against the clock to stop the General Election from happening in July. It doesn’t matter if they hold it in July, or hold it three months later, as a party, they are done for and actually there’s a small part of me that hopes they succeed, because if they do, the damage to them will be all the greater. But can they actually stop it and how can they do that, when the King has already given his assent?
Right, so clearly Rishi Sunak, our erstwhile drowned rat of a Prime Minister has finally it seems found a shiver for his spine and called the General Election for the 4th July, however it also seems that this has all happened as a bit of a surprise to his party. He had informed his cabinet ahead of his announcement, so they all knew, but the backbenches, fearing for their seats as they rightly should be are not happy at all at the prospect of democracy removing their sorry hides from the gravy train they’ve happily been riding at our expense.
As such, overnight reports have come in that a group of Tories, unnamed of course, so obviously caveats there, that a group of Tories, seeing this move by Sunak as absolute madness and Nick Watt of Newsnight posted possibly the most BBC explainer possible explaining the reaction to Sunak’s announcement:
‘A Tory rebel source tells me: Letters are going in calling for a no confidence vote in Rishi Sunak after reports of an imminent general election announcement.
Another Tory source: panic in the tea room. Nobody was expecting this. “Everyone mortified,” the source told me.’
Don’t you just love how afraid of democracy this bunch are? You’re flailing in the polls, so somehow we have to stop this happening, like that is going to help you. Letters of no confidence is the answer, let’s install yet another unelected, mandateless Prime Minister who can then call this election off, that’s the answer!
It really isn’t people across this country are absolutely sick of you. 14 years of absolute misery and people are desperate, even formerly Tory voters, to give you lot your marching orders, but this time they are against the clock to do so if they’re going to pull this stunt off.
Previously we’ve seen the Tories take weeks to pick their new leader and inflict another Prime Minister on the country that nobody voted for, because as much as we only officially vote for a local MP, who will be Prime Minister still shapes the thinking of many people when they go to vote.
This time they won’t be able to do that. The dissolution of parliament is happening as things stand, next Thursday, 30th May, so the campaign begins officially on the 31st, so a new Prime Minister would need to be installed by then. Therefore there can be no contest, no time for that – or can there? I’ll come back to that prospect in a moment – but for my point here, they would need around somebody that all the disparate, fractured wings of the Tory Party, from the One Nation Tories, to the ERG, can agree on and fear for their own seats, well that would be a unifying issue I suppose, especially for a nasty, self serving bunch like this lot, though obviously should, the remote possibility exist that the Tories can still win this election, there will likely be further dissent over that leader once in power again. Strong and stable it would be anything but.
Of course to even get that far, the letters of no confidence have to go in and be sufficient to trigger that vote of no confidence. Apparently since Sunak’s announcement, they have indeed been flying in, so in the sweetness stakes, nothing quite tops starting a General Election like the prospect of the Tory leader, facing a no confidence vote before it even gets off the ground. Why should the public vote for Sunak, when even his own parliamentary colleagues want him out? Great optics guys, truly first class.
So, where we are, with a week to go is letters going in, they really need to hit target today, which several ‘Tory sources’ are claiming will happen and then it is a case of the 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady to tell us all that the threshold has been met, 52 letters I believe it is at this moment in time. Now Tory MP Simon Clarke said back in March that that threshold had nearly been met, so how many more letters are actually needed to hit target? Well we don’t for sure, because Graham Brady is the only one who knows and it is at his discretion as to when he announces that threshold has been met. So although desperate Tories might be sending letters in, there is no guarantee Brady will do anything with them before next Thursday. Brady himself is stepping down at the next election, so on the flipside, he might announce the threshold has been met straight away, he has nothing to lose himself, he gets a few more months on MP wages if it gets stalled, but equally he might be ready to shuffle off now and prefers that option. There’s no forcing when a declaration of a vote of no confidence has to happen, so these letters can keep going in, the threshold might get met, and Brady announces next Thursday after the dissolution of parliament and not a thing can be done about it then, since at that point there are no MPs.
Of course another possibility, another angle to this story, is that, upon getting wind of Sunak calling the General Election there are reports that that in itself has triggered more letters of no confidence and Sunak calling it yesterday, in the pouring rain, hardly the most opportune moment to announce, he could have waited another day or two surely you might think until there was better weather, but maybe he really couldn’t. If Brady had given the heads up that the threshold had been reached, then Sunak calling the election when he did, was his last gasp attempt to hang onto power. I’m not completely sold on this, there are reports that Sunak has not been happy in the role for a while, he hasn’t turned things around for his party, none of his horrible policy announcements have resonated, he’d have done better to have called an election after he got in and was still in a relative honeymoon period, but instead he did a Gordon Brown and has been punished for that in part, his policies have been rancid, rotten and racist, there’s no getting away from the fact he has been a chronically awful Prime Minister.
But let’s assume that the letters are in and Brady announces this swiftly. What then?
Well as I said, they need a new PM and they need a single candidate to just walk into the role, no time for a contest, but even if they install somebody, say, Penny Mordaunt for example, her name was being bandied about a while back let’s just pick her as a for instance. Can she actually stop it still? Sunak has already been to see old sausage fingers himself, the King, his assent has been given to dissolve parliament, but the writs to actually do so are not yet written and dissolution is still a week away. Installing a new leader, if they can do it in time, can choose to revoke the Election. That would again require informing the King of that intention and the intention to form a government again and ask his permission to do so, under the Lascelles Principles, which govern the actions the King can or cannot take, there remains the theory at least that he could refuse to revoke or assent to a new unelected government, the grounds to do so would be that this would be an affront to democratic rights, and I think there’s a case for that in this scenario certainly, but that then opens up a constitutional can of worms and Charles may not choose to do that. If he agrees though, then the Election is off. It’s completely new territory here, never been done before stuff.
Now, another possibility, is that the Tories will spend the summer actually having a leadership contest if Sunak gets deposed, he still has to lose that vote of no confidence of course, that’s just the assumption I’ve made until this point, though I struggle to see how he’d survive one, but instead of agreeing a single new Prime Minister, between the disparate Tory groups, they agree a caretaker candidate specifically chosen to just call the election off and then trigger a summer long leadership contest, whilst trying somehow to turn their fortunes around whilst they very publicly show how badly they are yet again falling apart. You can imagine how popular that will make them, not.
Whether these Tory rebels actually succeed or not, the damage is getting done anyway. Just the fact this is being talked about is damaging them, Sunak being undermined damages them, a vote of no confidence as we go into a General Election is catastrophic for them, they’ve 14 years of lying and wrecking the country that they have to try and defend and calling the election off for a new leadership contest, will practically have people taking up torches and pitchforks I should think. If they go down that road, they still by law have to call the General Election by the end of next January, they are just delaying the inevitable and making matters even worse for themselves going down this route, so for that reason I don’t mind if it end up coming to pass, though I fancy the odds of that are very remote, a lot of ducks need to get in a row to pull it off. But ultimately the Tories will lose even more badly if they delay now, than if they just suck it up and take it on the chin as one of their former leaders famously said.
Meanwhile I covered Sunak getting drenched calling the election in this video recommendation here, you’ve no doubt seen plenty of coverage of this already, but here’s my take on it and if you’ve got this far I’d like to think you enjoyed the content, perhaps enough to like share and subscribe whilst you’re here and watch a bit of the channel and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.