Rishi Sunak knew his premiership would be bound for a rocky start, but the embarrassing defenestration of one of his close cabinet allies after just two weeks threatens to reopen bitter divisions in the Conservative party. Despite initial attempts to resist sacking Gavin Williamson after a slew of bullying allegations, the prime minister was forced on Tuesday to accept his resignation – not because of any admission of wrongdoing, but because it was becoming a “distraction”. The official explanation for Williamson’s departure allows him to leave with slightly better grace than being sacked from cabinet for the third time, and lets the prime minister keep his own hands clean.
But it will only ramp up concern among Tory MPs about Sunak’s political judgment. Committing what they see as such a grave unforced error so soon into his premiership raises questions about why the prime minister recruited Williamson in the first place and then fought so hard to keep him. The battle to keep Williamson from being thrown out of cabinet was under way even on Tuesday afternoon. It is understood the government was planning to release a statement trying to brush the issue under the rug by saying he would be attending anti-bullying training. However, it was pulled at the last-minute. Realising the number of colleagues Williamson had made enemies of, senior figures in No 10 understood they could not ask MPs and ministers to batten down the hatches and defend Sunak’s decision. They wanted to avoid a return to the long drawn out U-turns of Boris Johnson’s administration, when – like the Grand Old Duke of York – he would march colleagues up to the top of the hill before finally capitulating, embarrassing them all in the process. There was also the threat of more allegations against the former Cabinet Office minister coming out, which would only spark further inquiries and spill more bad blood among an already deeply divided Conservative party. One MP argued that under Liz Truss, the rifts between various factions had been like a schism – whereas under Sunak these only appeared like potholes. While it is certainly true most MPs have temporarily lost their appetite for rebellion and allowed themselves a reprieve from being the central characters in a political soap opera, the ceasefire was showing signs of strain. Wendy Morton, the ex-chief whip, openly reported Williamson, and former party chair Jake Berry had questioned Suella Braverman’s suitability to be re-appointed home secretary after breaching the ministerial code, suggesting an unhappy coalition of Truss’s allies had already begun forming. Others were beginning to piece together Sunak’s support for Williamson – who was sacked as defence secretary for allegedly leaking from the national security council – and Braverman, forced to step down for leaking a Home Office document. One senior MP said the prime minister appeared to be “surrounding himself with people who have a known track record of national security issues”. With prime minister’s questions looming on Wednesday and Keir Starmer using the previous two weeks to attack both appointments and undermine Sunak’s promise to restore integrity to government, No 10 bit the bullet. They had sought to avoid being forced to kowtow to political or media pressure, fearing that setting a precedent by sacking Williamson would have difficult implications when future ministers were in a tricky spot. But in the end, the benefit of having him back in government as an effective shadow chief whip melted away. His authority was lost, and the longer Sunak tied himself to him, the more the prime minister’s was being eroded, too. The prime minister has ended up in the worst of all worlds, perhaps secretly hoping Williamson will “shut up and go away” but wary that a powerful and knowledgable so-called “master of the dark arts” is now loose on the backbenches. Meanwhile, the alleged bullying victims face a potentially lengthy wait for the results of multiple investigations. Sunak will hope that he has acted quickly enough to contain the row into a “Westminster bubble” issue before public anger began to properly foment. But he may have acted too late to avoid himself being irrevocably tarnished.