Rishi vs the rebels: can Sunak unite the party?

With growing Tory unrest on everything from energy to housing, does the PM have the strength and backing to stare down his backbenchers? Anne McElvoy reports

IT SHOULD be a happy year end for the suave “accidental” Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. When he was chancellor from 2020-22 and living in the No 10 flat while Boris and Carrie Johnson held court in the upstairs apartment next door, Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, settled in quickly. After Liz Truss won the summer leadership race and made no offer to Sunak to serve in her Cabinet it looked like he and his family might not be visiting again anytime soon. But when Truss crashed and burned along with her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunak was the default candidate to stop markets mayhem and a slide towards Labour. There was, says one of those restored to Cabinet, “a huge sense of relief that we were no longer banging our collective head on a brick wall and making it bleed support”.

The honeymoon has been brief. This week, a flagship policy on house-building targets to address a severe shortage of homes had to be withdrawn after a backbench rebellion by more than 100 MPs. Ministers also face a row over whether the Government wants tougher caps on asylum numbers — with rival Cabinet factions claiming different outcomes are on the table.

The political message is clear — just a couple of months into his tenure, Sunak cannot rely on his MPs to back him on decisive legislation. Another split is between Tories (such as David Davis) who believe the “online harms” Bill to protect the young and vulnerable from harmful social media is unworkable and those who believe the party’s faith in “big tech” has led to a free-for-all.