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Rishi Sunak is braced for a major rebellion on Tuesday by rightwing Conservative MPs over his Rwanda migration policy, as his party’s deputy chair Lee Anderson said he was joining the revolt.
The prime minister is locked in a power struggle with Tory right wingers who want to toughen the policy, even as his election chief Isaac Levido warned Conservative MPs that they faced a drubbing at the polls unless they stopped the infighting.
Levido told the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs he was fighting to win the election, and insisted it was still possible, but he warned: “It’s time to get serious. Let me be clear: divided parties fail.”
Sunak’s party was in turmoil ahead of key votes on his Rwanda asylum bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday, with veteran MPs urging the right to pull back from civil war. “My party has gone mad,” said one former cabinet minister.
Anderson, a forthright “red wall” Tory MP and former coal miner, had joined Sunak in a campaigning video this month, but his decision to vote for rebel amendments to the Rwanda asylum bill means he is now facing the sack.
Officials from the rebel Conservative camp said Downing Street was “panicking” and looking to make concessions to placate the rightwingers who want to toughen Sunak’s bill.
The legislation aims to speed up deportations of asylum seekers to Rwanda after the Supreme Court ruled the policy was unlawful.
The rebels, led by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick and Eurosceptic veteran Sir Bill Cash, believe other Tory MPs will quit their government jobs to back their amendments to the bill.
More than 50 Conservative MPs have backed one amendment that would disapply international law in an attempt to ensure asylum seekers are deported to east Africa before the next election.
Sunak has said previously if he toughened the bill by “an inch” there was a risk Rwanda, which has insisted the migration pact is underpinned by international law, would pull out of the scheme.
Downing Street was talking to rebel Tory MPs, to see if it could “tighten” the legislation and quell the rebellion, but many on the right of the party said they would not be fobbed off.
Sir Simon Clarke, former levelling up minister, told the News Agents podcast he could vote to try kill the entire bill at its Commons third reading unless it was strengthened. “I’m minded as it stands today, to vote against,” he said.
One former cabinet minister said Tory rebels on the Rwanda policy were considering publicly calling for Sunak to go if the prime minister failed to sufficiently strengthen the bill.
Another former cabinet minister, on the right of the party, described colleagues as “nutcases”.
A third former cabinet minister, who is standing at the next election, said the party seemed to have a “death wish”, adding: “I’m going to be elected but I’ll be surrounded by corpses.”
Levido briefed Tory MPs on the dire state of opinion polls after one YouGov “mega poll” suggested the party could be heading for a 1997-style election wipeout.
The survey of 14,000 people, published by the Daily Telegraph, suggested Labour could win a 120-seat Commons majority if a poll was held today.
The poll, funded by unnamed Tory donors from a hitherto unknown “Conservative Britain Alliance”, forecast Labour would win 385 seats, compared with 169 for the Tories.
Levido told Conservative MPs the poll was organised by people who seemed “intent on undermining this government and our party” and who appeared to have “thrown in the towel”.
Sunak’s allies claimed the poll was part of a rightwing plot by enemies of the prime minister to try to bring him down.
He is being urged by moderate “One Nation” Tory MPs to face down his critics on the Rwanda bill. Labour will oppose the amendments by rightwing MPs so Sunak should easily see off the rebellion.
Sunak’s allies believe he will secure the passage of the bill at its third reading, and that the rebels will not vote to block the entire measure.
But Tory disunity on such a crucial issue will be highly damaging to Sunak and fuel claims by Reform UK, a smaller rightwing party, that the prime minister cannot be trusted to take tough action on immigration.
