After election meltdown, it's time for Tory MPs to save Britain by removing Rishi Sunak

These local elections have been a catastrophe, a disaster, a meltdown. Yet another by-election loss – this time in Blackpool South – because Conservative voters are on strike. Rishi Sunak is to blame for all this and should go now or be removed by a Vote of No Confidence next week.

Conservative MPs need to take their heads out of the sand because there is no salvation under him. We can’t go on like this.

Polling guru Sir John Curtice says they have been the worst results in 40 years. He points out that much of the Conservative vote has swung to Reform where they stood. I note seats where the drop in the Conservative vote is exactly the same as the rise for Reform – see Sunderland’s Washington West, for example: Conservatives down -18%; Reform up +18%.

One in four Conservative voters are swinging to Reform and, just as damningly, one in four are refusing to vote – Conservative voters are not coming out under Sunak. Only one in ten Conservative voters are estimated to be going to Labour or Liberal Democrats. Sunak has driven true Conservatives out; they don’t see him or his government as representing real Conservative principles or policies; just global corporatism and EU-like technocratic government, like ‘Davos Man’ Starmer.

This disaster follows from the appalling local election results a year ago – when we were expected to win local council seats but lost more than 1,000 councillors under Sunak’s leadership. 

Even where we hung on to Mayoral seats – such as Ben Houchen on Teesside - Sunak can claim no credit.

Susan Hall may win an amazing victory in London over Kalamity Khan tomorrow. Yet she has received next to no help – that’s because she is a proper decent Tory with real principles and the Sunakites wanted other candidates – such as Daniel Korski, a former Number 10 adviser, where their fixing went wrong and he had to step down over a groping allegation.

Andy Street ran a campaign denying he was a Conservative – it was Brand Andy that was at the fore, not the party. Houchen too was doing his own thing as Brand Houchen – notably leaving his blue rosette behind for the count. 

Notably, Boris Johnson backed all three mayoral candidates individually rather than Sunak; and some excuses for this debacle ring hollow when saying 4 years ago was under Boris – quite! We won the Hartlepool by-election, Peter Mandelson’s former seat, under his watch!

But the question goes out: where was Sunak?! Was he standing side by local councillors right around the country where these elections took place? Was he routinely standing shoulder to shoulder with Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), or bounding around cities as an asset to mayors under pressure? Not a bit of it. Nowhere to be seen.

Buried somewhere in the bunker with his equally useless advisers – a collective cabal with little understanding or experience of politics or of how to do it. He is a liability to the Party and our electoral prospects.

Sunak has never been a local councillor. He was parachuted into a safe rural MP seat warmed up by William Hague, not knowing one end of a sheep from another: that is one global corporatist Hague, giving way to a corporatist Goldman Sachs man.

Sunak delivers speeches to activists devoid of any passion or charisma – in a dull monotone tone like a scene out of TV’s ‘Office’ or ‘I Robot’ - a Treasury technocrat trying to be a politician. A photo of him addressing his own North Yorkshire constituents is painful – the body language is of everyone being bored and turned off – his own seat!?

And now we hear that this true blue area will have a Labour Mayor - with a majority of nearly 15,000 as the first for the new York & North Yorkshire region!

As the founder of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, puts it, Rishi “doesn’t do politics”. He should never have been a candidate. He is terrible at this. But somehow, he is Prime Minister.

Rishi is not a bad person, he is hard-working and bright. He will do very well running the AI firm alleged to be being readied for him in California, but he is well out of depth in this job. His personal agenda is limited to extending maths and banning smoking, when real Conservatives don’t like banning things, and going to Manchester to announce that HS2 isn’t going to Manchester. Like Gordon Brown, he is getting obsessed with detail and getting tetchy allegedly.

Sunak is not interested in foreign affairs, or in defence, or realising Brexit benefits, or indeed much at all actually, just in knifing Boris so he could run a technocratic government like a Treasury official might and extend his resume for global jobs.

He can afford a top tailor that would make James Bond purr, but his trousers are comically short, making him look like a schoolboy on a day’s visit not a world leader, and outdoing John Major’s tendency to tuck his shirt in his underpants. When he advertises Adidas Samba shoes, he kills the brand. 

So, this is a message to Conservative MPs in particular. The future of our country and our party is in your hands.

You know this administration isn’t working, even if you backed Rishi originally. These local elections are proving predictions right in relentless polling that the Conservatives are on course for 100 seats, making John Major’s 167 seats in 1997 look like an achievement.

This is not about loyalty – I am loyal to country first and party second – it is about survival. We are talking now of an existential crisis for the Conservative Party; previously the most successful democratic party in the world.

You know what you need to do: you must ensure Sunak steps aside or faces a Vote of No Confidence next week. It is time to act. It would take two weeks, that’s all: one week for limited hustings; one week for MPs and members to vote – a 48-hour electronic ballot was ready to go last time a former Party Chairman told me.

If you don’t act now; it is you who will be damned by history and by ten or more years of wokey Hard Left Labour rule. You will be responsible for that. The polling data is clear: bring in a principled Leader and bring back traditional Tory policies, like low taxes, a smaller state, more defence spending, and you can bring back Conservative voters and put the Conservatives back in contention.

Boris turned things around in 6 months in 2019 – from 17% national and 7% in Euros – to win a landslide. We can do it again.

David Campbell Bannerman is a former Conservative MEP who is now Chairman of the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) and of the Freedom Association