Sunak's Conservatives risk years of oblivion. Changing leaders won't solve anything | Martin kettle

IIncredible as it may seem, it is increasingly likely that Rishi Sunak's Conservative leadership will be challenged in June. To many, the idea that choosing a fifth Conservative prime minister in as many years could be the solution to the party's internal turmoil, or that abandoning Sunak a few months before a general election would revive the electorate, will seem totally illusory. However, for a large group of Conservative MPs and activists, it is an ideal path that appeals to them irresistibly.

These critics never supported Sunak in the first place. They can't forgive him for not getting Boris Johnson's call after Brexit. They despise his caution in the face of their obsessions. They treat his failure to dent Labor's lead in the polls with contempt. They believe, probably rightly, that in the local elections on May 2, Sunak could lead the Tories to a humiliating defeat. But they hope it will bring about another change of leader and a return to the country of the lost content of the populist right.

These local elections would matter a lot in all circumstances. These are not midterm elections from which a defeated ruling party can always hope to recover. Instead, we are almost at the end of the term. And they tell a fateful story. The conservatives are watch the loss by more than half of their councilors in May, with possible defeats for prominent mayors including Andy Street in the West Midlands and Ben Houchen in Tees Valley, and the rise of Richard Tices' Reform Party sneaking into the Conservative electorate of 2019.

Add to that last weekend’s much-publicized 15,000-strong figure. general election poll by Survation, and you throw a party on death row. The Survations poll predicts Labor will have a vast majority of 286 seats in the general election, with Keir Starmer leading 468 MPs into the next parliament and the Conservatives reduced to just 98, by far their worst result in the democratic era. A new YouGov survey estimates this figure at 403 seats, with a Labor majority of 154. The combination of disastrous poll results and likely defeats in local elections constitutes a powder keg for the Conservative leadership, ready to ignite after the local election weekend.

Sunak knows this only too well. This is why, by his rather modest standards as a natural-born politician, he is making unusual efforts in local campaigns. This is also why his threat to call a general election in June rather than submit to a challenge from his MPs should be taken more seriously than it currently is. The rebels are certainly taking this seriously, as it would undermine their desperate strategy. Their hope of persuading King Charles to block a request for Sunak's dissolution, however, is for the birds.

The volatility of the party is such that leadership candidates know the game is already underway. It is nevertheless likely that Sunak will cling to the loyalty of the majority, as John Major did in similar circumstances in 1995. But this is not a certainty. Ultimately, his deputies and their press collaborators form an invincible crew. If 53 of its 348 deputies If one asks for a vote of confidence, many others will cast aside all restraint.

From the stands, all this appears like a collective strategy of suicide. But for many on the ground, it is clearly different. Priti Patel and Suella Braverman assess the early challenges after the local elections. Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch don't want to be left behind if others have momentum. Neither does James Cleverly or Grant Shapps. Liz Truss, the most discredited conservative of the modern era, is eyeing the fray. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, although not MPs, will be drawn into the intrigue. Even Dominic Cummings is interested in it again.

What's missing in all this, however, is something much larger. Neither the current clumsy conservative party nor the successful ideological party the rebels fantasize about is a viable and stable center-right governing party. A change of leader changes nothing. Recreating an electorally viable party is not the work of weeks, but of years. This is especially the case when, as conservative journalist Danny Finkelstein puts it underlines this week, young conservative voters have almost disappeared.

Rather than pretending that ousting Sunak will solve or even do anything to alleviate the plight of the Conservative party, the Tories need a dose of historical humility and to play a longer game. After a terrible Conservative performance in the 1995 local elections, historians Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon argued in this article that although party leaders insisted the next general election was still winnable, the Conservatives were locked in a cycle that portended a devastating disaster. defeat. This analysis seems as fresh, relevant and, above all, as precise today as it was then.

Ball and Seldon argued that nine conditions defined the likelihood of a Conservative defeat. These were the following elements: a negative image of the leader, confusion over political orientation, internal disunity, organizational disarray, weakened party finances, a hostile media and intellectual climate, public discontent with the With regard to the economy, it is time for a change of mood and a credible opposition party.

All were present in 1995, including six in acute form. It's pretty much the same thing today. Sunaks Notes are poor. Political confusion thinks net zero or a race to the top is common. Divisions between parties run deep. The intellectual climate is increasingly negative. Economic satisfaction is very low. There is a desire for change. And the Labor Party is a credible alternative government. As Liberal-Democratic polling specialist Mark Pack points out observed last weekthis places conservatives today in a situation at least as difficult as in 1945, 1964 and 1997, all elections lost by the conservatives.

The real question facing conservatives today is not whether they can extricate themselves from this predicament and win the election while still in power. All evidence indicates that this is not possible. The real question is whether the Conservatives can use the now almost inevitable period of absence from government to learn and recover in order to win an election against the opposition. They have done so in the past, but the process has sometimes been divisive and difficult, as was the case after 1997. Here, too, there are no guarantees.

Ten years after their 1995 Guardian article, Ball and Seldon published a book: Recover energy, on precisely this aspect of the history of the conservatives. He argued that in opposition, conservatives have too often lost sight of the need to adapt to new ideas and a credible alternative platform, backed by the lust for power. But he stresses that any opposition recovery also depends on the failures, shortcomings and economic record of the government in place.

It's hard not to agree. The Conservative Party has lost its way in government. Yet he also shows no signs of measuring the scale of the tasks that would await him in opposition. The truth is that the future of the Conservative Party does not depend on the personalities of those vying for Sunak's job. It depends on Keir Starmers' Labor Party and its future record in government.