The mood music just isn’t getting any better for the Tories. As Sunak tries to look to the future under his improved leadership, he is dragged back into the past by the Covid enquiry.

Under the formidable chair, Baroness Hallet, the enquiry has asked for all Boris Johnson’s fully unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries. The government is resisting and may go to the courts to prevent having to hand them over. They have until 4 pm today.

Standards need to rise in how government is conducted

Johnson’s disastrous reign still overshadows the Tories. One also suspects there is some really embarrassing material in his texts, perhaps involving a bunch of today’s ministers, including even the PM himself. Oh dear. If ministers, incredibly, end up legally challenging the government’s own Covid enquiry, it will be another nail in its coffin.

It takes me back to Peter Hennessy’s fine writings on constitutional government. He documented admiringly how Thatcher ran her administration by the book, even the Falklands war, through committees with civil servants present and minutes taken.

The rot started with Blair and his ‘sofa government’ and has continued in particular via Cameron and Johnson. Decisions are taken in secret by a small cabal of ministers and advisers with no accountability. One understands there are more social media channels today and Covid set severe limits on gatherings, but this is no excuse for government by text.

The lack of a written constitution means that the erosion of proper procedures in policy making has continued unchecked and undocumented.

Time to put an end to it and get back to fully, ‘by the book’, publicly accountable government. Perhaps Starmer, as a former Director of Public Prosecutions, can make a start.

In the meantime, the heavy anchor of Johnson and his florid informal musings (never put in writing what you don’t want to see in public!) will continue to drag Sunak’s government under water.

Only today’s Tory Party could consider Rishi Sunak ‘left-wing’. Apparently, soft on immigration, high taxes, and culture wars, this Thatcherite, pro-Brexit PM is seen as betraying the Tory cause by many right-wing grass-roots members and some former and current cabinet ministers.

Ludicrous.

The Tory Party has historically been so successful because it was always ideologically flexible. It supported established institutions and positioned itself as mildly socially conservative but not always (Cameron/gay marriage). In aiming for a smaller state and lower taxes, it was consistent in putting lowering deficits first, knowing nothing should get in the way of a well-run, slightly redistributive economy when finances allowed. Conservatives were always about ‘the economy stupid’.

Well, not now. Brexit, a failed attempt at immigration controls damaging growth in the process, a brief period of kamikaze tax cuts adding to a soaring deficit, pushing up already rising interest rates, have together been economically ruinous.  Add a good dose of confected culture wars and attacks on the judiciary and sovereignty of Parliament and Tory right-wing recklessness is complete. Thatcher would never have stood for it, cue Sunak.

Sunak has come in to restore economic competence and competence more generally, getting some of that famed ideological flexibility back into the Tory system.

It will last only until the next General Election.

The post-election positioning is beginning now. The formation of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, which held its first conference recently demanding more say for members (code for bring back Johnson), will probably be influential post an election. And more member involvement nearly always signals a further drift to the right. Then, we have had manifestos from leading Tories outlined at a right-wing, National Conservatism conference last week, not least by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. She is clearly positioning herself as the next leader, blatantly criticising cabinet colleagues on immigration. She has no sense of loyalty or public service, and we await her second ‘on a matter of principle’ resignation if her speeding fine doesn’t get her first…

Last, but not least, there is some evidence according to Anthony Seldon’s book on Johnson, (a highly readable insight into the chaos of Johnson’s premiership) that selection to join the parliamentary candidates’ list has favoured pro-Brexit, culture war warriors. That would drive the next diminished MP in-take further to the right if this was the case.

The Party’s Right is therefore flexing its muscles and one nation Tories remain on the side-lines. As ever, they are too soft, too unfocused. They simply hand-wring and hope for the best.

All the indications are that after a heavy election defeat, Sunak will step down, and the Tories will march rightwards. If this happens, the next 10 years spell disaster for the Conservative Party but also excitement for those willing to fill an increasingly vacated centre-right ground in British politics.

The analysis has been done, and there are no silver linings in very dark clouds for the Conservative Party, except perhaps for the Coronation dominating headlines. A loss of over 1000 council seats, surpassing even the gloomiest of expectations, was bad enough, but it was the distribution of votes that should really set alarm bells ringing.

No silver linings for the Conservative Party…

There is now a firm anti-Tory alliance in place, ruthlessly ejecting Tories wherever they reside. The Liberal Democrats in the South, Labour in the North, with the break between the Brexit voting public and the Conservative Party clearly evident. Add a deeply unhelpful sprinkling of Green Party successes, and the rout was complete. For those saying there is a route back from this for the Tories, they should remember these results exclude London and Scotland where Labour is resurgent.

So, why, under the highly competent Sunak, have the Conservatives not steadied their ship electorally? Quite simply, it is down to two factors. The Tories’ often lamentable record in office and increasing noise from their right-wing.

Excessive austerity contributing to a Brexit that has failed to deliver is part of the backdrop. Add the leadership disarray courtesy of Johnson and Truss, then record taxes, failing public services, and the seeming abandonment of tangible levelling up initiatives, and the sorry picture is complete. The refrain that we now live in a country where nothing works is lethal for the Tories’ prospects.

And yet, their response? Many in the Conservative Party think a lurch to the Right is required. A new organisation, the Conservative Democratic Organisation, led by the ludicrous, failed ex UKIP and Tory MEP, David Campbell Bannerman, calls for more Party democracy, the ousting of Sunak and the re-coronation of Johnson. An international conference in London involving right-wing politicians, including Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Lord David Frost, spells further trouble. As if, in the face of failing public services, a call today for a low tax economy (a laudable aim perhaps in the long-term) will win over red-wall voters? And then, in a bid to fan cultural war flames, you have the likes of Tory Vice-Chair, Lee Anderson, whose anti-woke utterings are guaranteed to drive moderate Tory voters into the arms of the LibDems.

As the wise, moderate, ex-Tory MP David Gauke has commentated, a hard right, low-tax, socially conservative party makes sense in a system of proportional representation, probably guaranteed a fairly consistent 25-30% share of votes. But not in a first past-the-post system.

The Tories seem lost and forces are building to remove them at any cost. In Opposition, the battle for the soul of the Conservative Party will take place and the runes do not look good. Meanwhile, Sunak has to keep the show on the road. All Tories, right, left and centre, who once remembered the importance of loyalty, should give him their backing if, for nothing else, to minimise the scale of defeat in 2024.