Rishi Sunak believes he can turn around Tory fortunes, but some ministers have ... trends now
Rishi Sunak's Cabinet away day in the Elizabethan splendour of Chequers was meant to be the latest step in the new Prime Minister's drive to show the country that the grown-ups are back in charge.
Detailed presentations were organised on each of his five pledges and ministers were sworn to secrecy in a bid to prevent private disputes spilling out into the public gaze as they had when Theresa May gathered her own ministers at the Buckinghamshire retreat.
The mood was meant to be 'business-like'. Yet the noises outside were hard to ignore. Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi had failed to take the hint that he is no longer wanted and turned up despite having his presentation cancelled. 'No one wanted to catch his eye,' said one of those present.
And disastrous new polling suggested that the Tories were losing the 'Terry and June' voters in their forties and fifties, who have been the bedrock of recent Conservative election wins.
Rishi Sunak's (pictured) Cabinet away day in the Elizabethan splendour of Chequers was meant to be the latest step in the new Prime Minister's drive to show the country that the grown-ups are back in charge
The cabinet travelled to the Prime Minister's estate in Chequers today amid the growing row
Forty miles away, Boris Johnson was reminding voters – and Tory MPs – that he is still here, posing for pictures with former cabinet ally Nadine Dorries ahead of a major TV interview next week on her new Talk TV show.
Inside the Chequers drawing room, the news was scarcely more encouraging. Elections guru Isaac Levido did not 'sugarcoat' the dire opinion polls. There was, he said, only a 'steep and narrow path to election victory'.
Even this would require not just a laser-like focus on delivering the public's priorities, but also an iron party discipline of the kind Conservative MPs have been unable to muster for some years now.
What is more, he said, any turnaround in the polls is likely to take many months to emerge. Local elections in May will be difficult. The Conservatives may still be trailing Labour by a wide margin come party conference time in October, making it harder than ever to persuade jittery Tory MPs to knuckle under.
Labour's commanding poll lead is 'soft' and enthusiasm for Sir Keir Starmer is far from baked in. But the Tories cannot afford more infighting.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson waits on the sidelines as allies try to calculate if and when he will get the opportunity to return. Or rather, he doesn't wait on the sidelines at all.
Mr Sunak's team proudly boast they are attempting to run a 'no news' government, in a bid to calm things down after last year's political turbulence.
But Mr Johnson is only too happy to fill the news vacuum. This week, his trip to Ukraine and passionate call to arms in the Daily Mail appeared to have a galvanising effect on Western leaders, who finally agreed to send vital tanks to Kyiv just days later.
Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi (pictured) is facing increasing pressure to go following revelations over his tax affairs
A new poll by People Polling today gives Labour a 29-point lead with voters, up five points in a week.
The former prime minister is nominally loyal to Mr Sunak. He has not uttered a word of criticism in public since being forced from office last summer – and his decision to back a Tory rebellion over wind farms only served to hasten a government U-turn that was already looking inevitable.
But his allies and supporters have not gone away. 'If the local elections are bad and the polls stay bad, then Rishi could find himself looking very vulnerable very quickly,' said one MP sympathetic to the former PM.
