With a general election approaching, some Conservative ministers fear they won’t just be out of government in 18 months’ time but ejected from the House of Commons altogether. With that in mind, and talk of a reshuffle next Friday growing, some admit privately they have signalled a desire to move to the backbenches. Doing so allows them to start running down the clock on the up-to-two-year ban that can be imposed on taking up a private sector job after leaving Whitehall. Whispers about plans by Rishi Sunak to reorganise his top team have percolated through the corridors of parliament for weeks, but senior Tories are now bracing for the axe to start swinging in seven days.
In the early hours of the morning on Friday 21 July, results will start to trickle in from three byelections in areas stretching from the south-west of England, to London, and up to Sunak’s own stomping ground in North Yorkshire. On paper, two of them are safe seats that the Tories should hold comfortably. But fears are growing that Sunak could become the first prime minister since Harold Wilson in 1968 to lose three byelections in a single day. “It’s completely unsustainable to do nothing and just tell us to hold our nerve all summer,” said one indignant backbencher. In June last year, Oliver Dowden resigned as party chair to take the heat out of Tory fury at the party losing two byelections simultaneously: Tiverton and Honiton to the Liberal Democrats, and Wakefield to Labour. If disaster strikes on Friday, Sunak will have no such luxury. His new party chair, Greg Hands, has been in the job for only five months, having been parachuted in to shore up Conservative central headquarters in February, when Nadhim Zahawi was forced out. So who will take the blame? Sunak can either accept the consequences himself, at the risk of appearing oblivious to the need for change and leading more Tory MPs to lose faith in his plans. Or he can bite the bullet and reconfigure his cabinet for what may be the final time before a general election. After all, as a Tory frontbencher noted: “If we do it next Friday, parliament will be in recess and those who’ve been demoted or given the sack will have all summer to cool down.” At the cabinet level, there are relatively few who seem to be in Sunak’s sights for the chop: Thérèse Coffey was widely regarded to have been given a top job as a sop to Liz Truss’s allies in the immediate aftermath of the former PM’s defenestration last October.
As environment secretary, issues with sewage dumping, animal rights legislation being shelved and the finances of Thames Water have left many to ask questions about her ability to solve issues that have started many a social media firestorm. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, is the longest continually serving cabinet minister, but his apparent frustration at a lack of gratitude from Ukraine’s leader has left some speculating he, too, could be reshuffled. Though there are many Tory MPs – on the left and further right of the party – who are unhappy with the failure of the home secretary, Suella Braverman, to “stop the boats”, Sunak has little incentive to remove her until the legal battle over the Rwanda removal scheme is over. Tory sources suggested he was using Braverman much like Theresa May did Boris Johnson. By appointing him foreign secretary, May tried to get Johnson to “own” the issue of Brexit so he would bear some responsibility for any failures. Braverman is having to take the flak for so far failing to “stop the boats”. Sunak has been keen to assemble a cabinet largely in his own image – straightforward, unflashy and low-profile – and is likely to prioritise others who fit this mould in a reshuffle. The prime minister’s focus in the run-up to the general election will be on competence and delivery, given the uphill battle to deliver his “five pledges”. People such as Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, John Glen, the chief secretary to the Treasury, and Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, are viewed as among his closest allies. The greater action is likely to be further down the ministerial ladder. Younger and ambitious MPs serving as parliamentary undersecretaries of state are vying for jobs at minister of state level. The education minister Claire Coutinho and Laura Trott, in the work and pensions department, could be in line for promotion. Likewise Craig Williams, who has served as Sunak’s unpaid parliamentary private secretary, keeping his ear to the ground and squaring off issues before they arise. “We need to show we’re not the same party of windbags as the country first elected in 2010,” was the verdict of one senior Tory. There are also ministers whom Sunak has little motivation to keep on side. Some, such as the culture minister Stuart Andrew, will lose their seats under the boundary review and have not yet found a new constituency. Others, such as the health minister Will Quince, have announced plans to stand down at the next election.
“Rishi’s got no reason to keep them on. He needs to be able to hand out jobs, so sadly that will mean seeing the back of some good people but who are on their way out of this place,” said a government source. Reshuffle rumours have come and gone, meaning one next Friday is not certain. The results of the byelections are also still up in the air. If the Tories cling on in Selby and Ainsty (where Labour is fighting to overturn a mammoth 20,000 majority), or Uxbridge and South Ruislip (which the Conservatives are, with some success, turning into a referendum on the expansion of the clean-air zone known as Ulez), there will be less political pressure on Sunak to carry out a reshuffle. But with fatalism slowly setting in across quarters of the party that the Conservatives might be in their final phase of power, MPs who still think their seat is worth fighting for may find it hard to take a job that will keep them stuck in Westminster. “There’s no point climbing the greasy pole if there’s no pole left to climb in 12 months’ time,” said one who anticipated facing just such a dilemma.