For a few days last
week, Sunak’s Tory Oblivion Project was put on hold as he trotted off to a remote
corner of Italy for a G7 meeting and then headed up to Switzerland
for a meeting on Ukraine. In his absence, there was a serious danger that his
project could stall, but he’s safely back in charge now, and making up for lost
time. Losing
his Campaigns Director to the already simmering betting scandal was a
masterstroke. That should certainly help to ensure that his enemies within the
Tory Party – the whole of the party, basically – don’t have much chance of
derailing his project. It’s made him so “incredibly angry” – in his own words –
that he’s going to do precisely nothing about the two candidates involved (so
far; who knows what else is yet to emerge, given that the bets appear to have
been part of a
much larger surge) until after the election a probe by outside
bodies is completed, despite the fact that a policeman involved was rapidly suspended in an
unusually swift response from the Met. England failing to win a football match
might have been outside his control, but was undoubtedly a lucky boost to his
little project.
Finally this week
came the news for which he has been anxiously waiting: the polling is now so
bad that even
his own seat could fall to the opposition. So far, it’s only one poll, and
others are still showing that he might be put on the spot about his insincere
pledge to serve a full five years, but there’s still almost two weeks left
for the other polls to confirm such an outcome. He needs to get the final total
below 53 seats to be reasonably certain of regaining his own freedom of
movement across the Atlantic, although achieving his true target of zero looks
as though it might still be just beyond his grasp. But there’s an increasing
chance that the next Tory leader will be chosen by putting all – or maybe even
just both – the remaining names in a hat and pulling one out rather than
bothering with an election process. All in all, he’s had a good week. He can
only hope that there are no further international distractions to take him away
from the campaign trail during the limited time remaining.
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