Welcome back to the second edition of the resurrected ‘A Tory Said What; post.
As explained in the January edition, these posts were a common thread of the previous incarnation of this blog which I decided to revive as we eventually head into the next General Election; whenever our unelected Prime Minister Rishi Sunak [Feature image at the top of the post; image from The Evening Standard] decides to hold it. The aim of the posts is to highlight comments made by government MPs that can be demonstrably shown to be untrue, questionable or just outright disgraceful.
These posts could be quite lengthy and at times totally over 100 comments. While I am not hitting those heights, I am limiting myself to no more than 7 MPs and with the General Election looming, I will also be using the latest figures available from the polling website polling.uk to highlight if they are expected to survive what nationally could be a Labour landslide. Are they projected to be returning to Parliament as part of the Conservative Party in opposition or will they be collecting their P45s?
February 2024 was certainly colourful!
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss made several interesting interventions and public comments. In truth, I could have dedicated an entire post to her and I still might if she continues in the same vein but I will start this month’s edition with her successor and the current incumbent to Number 10…
Rishi Sunak
‘Well I…I want to get people on the plane’.
‘I have counted 30 in the last year: pensions, planning, pollution, public sector pay, tuition fees, children, second referendums, defining a woman – although that was only 99% of a u-turn’.
Rishi Sunak did not cover himself in glory at the start of February. In a televised interview with Piers Morgan for Talk TV, the Prime Minister was challenged to a bet by Morgan that he could not get any illegal migrants deported to Rwanda as part of their plans. Sunak, after almost hesitating, shamelessly took the bet. The stakes…£1,000!
Not only is it absolutely abhorrent and downright cruel to be so flippant in gambling with the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world, but the amount is staggering. £1,000. Most people do not have that amount of cash lying around for them to throw away so recklessly, especially when we have experienced the cost of living crisis. Families are struggling to pay their bills, put food on the table and a roof over their heads and the Prime Minister is gambling an amount that would take someone on the national living wage (for over 25’s) 96 hours to earn as if it’s spare change!
Out of touch!
The Prime Minister did not apologise and instead doubled down. Talking to Radio 5, he claimed ‘I’m not a betting person and I was taken totally by surprise in the middle of that interview’. Essentially, we are led to believe that he made the bet as a sign of how determined he is to get that wretched scheme working. He did take a pause but he did take the bet. There is evidence that the statement of not being a betting man was a lie. Last July, he was recorded on the BBC’s Test Match Special podcast talking about spread-betting which he claimed to be ‘great’. Busted!
In that week’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), he came under fire from Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer for taking the bet. Initially, he claimed that at least he sticks by his promises and later went on to try and outline some of the policy u-turns made by his opponent. In his attempt to deflect though, he made things a lot worse as in his list of 30 u-turns in the last year he had to say ‘defining a woman’.
Esther Ghey, mother of the murdered transgender teenager Bhrianna Ghey was in Parliament that day; just days after Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe had been sentenced for her murder. Sunak would have known she was present. Just moments earlier, Starmer had opened the exchange praising her while Sunak himself ended the session doing the same and he was rightly furious in his reaction to the jibe.
While it is possible he did not hear Starmer say she was present, it does not make it right! Those sorts of jokes are not acceptable and should be considered acceptable at any time. Given the judge acknowledged that transphobic views played a part in her murder, the comments from the Prime Minister could not have been more poorly timed had he tried. As Prime Minister, he has a responsibility to set the standards of public life and lead the country by example. By making the joke, he has failed on that count and adds fuel to the fire towards the transgender community from those with transphobic views and the outcome they can have.
Bhrianna’s father urged the Prime Minister to apologise for the remarks. To my knowledge, he is yet to do so. In fact, Number 10 doubled down in the aftermath of the incident claiming that it was legitimate criticism. While it may be legitimate criticism to point out that the Leader of the Opposition has u-turned on policies and as he said he could count 30 examples, why did he say that one? He said there were 30 examples and he listed eight. Did he really need to include that one? No, it just highlights what sort of person this unelected Prime Minister really is.
General Election Projection (Richmond; Yorkshire): Sunak has held the Yorkshire seat of Richmond since 2015 as he replaced former Tory Leader William Hague. It is a relatively safe seat and has been Tory since 1910. In 2019, Sunak saw a 3.3-point swing to the Tories despite his share of the vote dropping slightly from 63.9% to 63.3%. At the General Election, this seat will be renamed Richmond and Northallerton and incorporate more of Thirsk and Malton. At present, he is projected to be safe as his vote drops to 49.5%. No Prime Minister has ever lost their seat in a General Election and at present, it would be a surprise if he were to lose his seat.
Liz Truss
‘I don’t get invited to dinner parties much anymore’
‘I believe the fundamental issue is that for years and years and years- and I think it goes back two decades – conservatives have not taken on the left-wing extremists. These people have repurposed themselves. They don’t admit they’re socialists or communists anymore, they say they’re ‘environmentalists’. They say that they’re in favour of helping people across all communities. They are in favour of supporting LGBT people or groups of ethnic minorities…This is a Conservative Government allowing people to define themselves, whether or not they’re a man or a woman. something which we know is a biological fact’
‘I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. What I did face was a huge establishment backlash and a lot of it actually came from the state itself. What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies. A quango is a quasi non-governmental organisation. In America you call it the administrative state or the deep state. But we have more than 500 of these quangos in Britain and they run everything.’
Step forward former Prime Minister Liz Truss! She is literally the gift that keeps on giving. Despite helping to give mortgage payers higher bills due to higher interest rates as the result of her economic policies and giving us the comedy gold of having her time effectively in power as Prime Minister not exceeding the shelf life of a lettuce, she keeps on going. You’d have thought after such a disastrous spell in power, she would disappear; not Liz Truss!
No, she resurfaced as the figurehead of a new Tory faction called Popular Conservatism; PopCon for short. The event was attended by fairly prominent Tories including Dame Priti Patel, Jacob Rees Mogg and Lee Anderson as well as musician Holly Vallance while Simon Clarke had been barred having called for Rishi Sunak to go. Ironically, according to Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, ‘Popular Conservatism couldn’t find a more unpopular spokesperson if they actually tried’. Their latest poll at the time had Truss’s approval ratings behind Starmer, Sunak and Boris Johnson. Ouch!
Her contribution was golden, if not scary! Parts of it were bat**** crazy!
Claiming Britain is ‘full of secret conservatives’ is far from a crazy suggestion as Britain is generally considered to be a socially conservative (with a small c) society. However, claiming that they are in some sort of silenced majority is. Further claiming that the left has been in power for over two decades given the Conservatives have been in power for 14 of those years and had more Prime Ministers in that time than the Labour Party has had in its history is ridiculous. It does not stack up.
Margaret Thatcher once said that her greatest achievement was Tony Blair due to the shift Labour took to the right under his leadership in abolishing Clause Four. That needs bearing in mind and so does the fact that the only real socialist leader the party has had this century was so ruthlessly personally assassinated in the media. Further to that, we now have a Labour Party leadership praising Ms Thatcher. If you look at the political spectrum objectively, there isn’t really that strong a left-wing party in the UK but yes, somehow the left has been in charge. Is Ms Thatcher somehow left-wing? If that is your worldview, then perhaps you have drifted so much further into the right, that you are now in the realm of the far-right and fascism, Ms Truss.
The language is also incredibly divisive. In the world according to the former Prime Minister, if you care about the environment, and want a brighter, liveable future for your kids or grandkids, you are now automatically a socialist or a communist. That should not put you on the extreme left. Even the market that the Tories place their trust in must realise that if the climate collapses, so too does the market. However, the division doesn’t end there.
As part of her so-called war on ‘wokery’ which used to mean being aware of social injustices and racial inequalities has been weaponised by the right since 2020 into a derogatory slur. She went on critiquing the Conservative government for allowing ‘people to define themselves’. That is despite government ministers repeatedly using that as a line of attack against Kier Starmer and around the same time Sunak used a trans-jibe against him in parliament in the presence of Bhrianna Ghey’s mother (see above) and government ministers repeating that a woman is a woman (as if we didn’t already know that?)
She is completely detached from reality. Or, am I the one detached from reality from thinking when it comes to LGBT issues that everyone should be treated equally and allowed to be happy being themselves and other than that…who gives a s***!
‘I don’t get invited to dinner parties much anymore’ she cried. Did she really only want to be Prime Minister for the perks after leaving office and now complaining she doesn’t enjoy that privilege. Deary me, I wonder why? Her term as Prime Minister was an unmitigated disaster. Especially for ordinary people who saw their mortgages or rent ruse due to the devastating impact her administration’s mini-budget had on the value of the pound and interest rates; with it destroying the economic credibility of the Conservative brand. Other than that, I have no idea…
Later in the month, Ms Truss travelled across the pond to Maryland for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted by Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and former head of Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon. Bannon himself spoke at the event which was also attended by former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage.
During her speech, she again peddled the theme that there was some sort of conspiracy theory of an establishment bringing her down as Prime Minister, who are content and ‘don’t want the status quo to change’. In this bracket, she included the Environment Agency, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England and the Judicial Appointments Commission which she grouped together as the ‘deep state’. In doing so, she fails to acknowledge any responsibility for her own failings and rewrites her own history. It was not the ‘deep state’ that brought her down, it was the response of the market which the Tories believe heavily in that reacted so negatively towards her economic plans that one of the parties she claims as part of the ‘deep state’, the Bank of England had to step in to save pension bonds and cripple people with increasing interest rates to an eventual 14 year high.
This was also the same event Bannon claimed former head of the EDL and right-wing thug Tommy Robinson was a ‘hero’. She just nodded along and amid suggestions she may not have heard him from Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, she does seem to say ‘That is correct’.
Despite all that, she bizarrely retains the Tory whip. Why? I can only speculate on this one, that the Prime Minister is too weak to do so. In removing the whip from his predecessor, he may fear he could open a nasty can of worms that could trigger a leadership contest. Or, maybe he was just happy it took some heat off him for the £1,000 bet and the trans-jibe at PMQ’s.
General Election Projection (South West Norfolk): South West Norfolk notably includes the towns of Kings Lynn and Thetford, it will be slightly reduced in geographical size due to the boundary review. The seat has been conservative since 1964 with Truss first elected in 2010. Since then, her share of the vote has only increased each time with a 69% share in 2019 and a majority of 26,195. That is projected to drop but she is still set to be returned to Westminister with a majority of the vote; reduced to 53.87%. The end result is that she should somehow survive and would be set to be a driving force in the internal narrative of the Conservative Party after their expected defeat at the polls.
Jacob Rees Mogg
‘”Electors across the world, not just the United Kingdom, have realised that the age of ‘Davos man’ is over. Of international cabals and quangos telling hundreds of millions of people how to live their lives’.
Jacob Rees Mogg, colloquially known as the minister of the 19th Century was another contributor to the PopCon speeches. The former business secretary and minister for Brexit Opportunities (did he find any?) used his speech to rail against the so-called ‘Davos Man’; seemingly a reference to the annual billionaire event held in Switzerland. It’s pretty bizzare given his pre-Parliamentary career was in those sorts of circles…
He also criticised the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and the Equalities Act, and even went as far to suggest the Supreme Court should be abolished. That’s bordering onto the far right to try and suppress rights; our rights as humans and attacking the judiciary.
However, when he was challenged on that line by Lewis Goddall, working for the News Agent, Mr Rees Mogg went for Goodall’s professional integrity. He accused Goodall of being very ‘left-wing’ and questioning if he was compliant with OfCom’s rules on due impartiality despite the GB News that Rees Mogg presents on being found to breach those guidelines instead of actually trying to explain what he meant. The exchange is shown below.
If politicians can say whatever they want and refuse to defend it when questioned with quite frankly, ridiculous deflection tactics, then they can get away with saying anything. That is very dangerous!
General Election Projection (North East Somerset and Hanham): North East Somerset is a very agricultural constituency with substantial green belt land and oddly encircles the city of Bath. Having voted for Brexit in the 2016 Referendum by 51.6%, the seat has been held by Mr Rees Mogg since 2010 and despite his share of the vote falling by 3.2% in 2019, he actually increased his majority by 7.3 points to 14,729. It will be renamed to North East Somerset and Hanham for the next General Election after losing parts of the South but gaining from the north taking a chunk from the Southern Glouchstershire constituency of Kingswood, recently won by Labour. As it stands, Mr Rees Mogg is set to contest the seat and is projected to LOSE that seat with projections putting him 4.5 points behind Labour.
Laura Trott
‘one of our fiscal rules…is that debt needs to be falling over the five year fiscal forecast as a percentage of GDP, which it is’.
This is the chief secretary to the Treasury appearing to get herself into a bit of a mess over numbers in an interview with Radio 4 PM presenter Evan Davis.
They were discussing Rishi Sunak’s key pledge to bring down the national debt where they then seemed to disagree over the debt forecast. Mr Davis referred to the figures published in November by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). These figures show that underlying debt was forecast to be 89% of GDP for 2023/24 but in five years the figure for 2028/29 puts it at 92.8%; up 3.8%. Despite these figures being quoted by Mr Davis, Ms Trott insisted that debt was still falling.
Ms Trott, as shown in the quote, had originally referred to the government’s fiscal rules. These rules dictate that debt must be falling in the fourth and fifth year of a financial forecast. Now, by that metric, while debt is forecast to be higher in 2028/29, it is falling that year. By that definition, the government are meeting their targets despite the debt percentage rising as that does not matter. All that matters is that it is falling at the end of the period although when independent fact-checkers Full Fact delved deeper it did not seem clear which numbers she was referring to.
Anyway, the fiscal rules are potentially misleading. Those comparisons of the national finances to that of a household are dangerous but I will stick with it for purposes of the following example as it is the measure our politicians seem to view public finances in. If someone says to you that debt is falling, you would expect it to be lower at the end of a forecast not higher. If it were your household budget, if your debt is falling at the end of a five-year period but it is higher than when you started, would you consider it sustainable? Would a bank or anyone if you’re after credit?
General Election Projection (Sevenoaks): Located on the Kent commuter belt into London, Sevenoaks constituency has been Blue since 1924 with Laura Trott being the successor to former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon as part of the 2019 intake. You imagine based on projections that she will be safe in the General Election with her projected vote share of 45.5% enough to win. Only extreme tactical voting could unseat her.
Esther McVey
‘People need to now get behind Rishi Sunak, who actually inherited a difficult set of circumstances and say ‘yes, he has turned the economy round – that is turning round now’.”
Goodness knows why Rishi Sunak felt we needed to have a Minister for Common Sense. Goodness knows why he chose Esther McVey as based on this claim, she doesn’t appear to have any.
These comments were made in an interview on BBC Radio 4 ‘Any Questions’ with Alex Forsyth when she peddled the line that Sunak is turning the economy around and delivering on some sort of plan. At this point in the exchange, the audience audibly turned to laughter.
Of course, this exchange came the day after the Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures showing the UK economy had shrunk by 0.3% at the end of 2023; so not growing and had in fact officially entered a recession. This is politically painful for Sunak given he had spent much political capital in naming growing the economy as one of his five key pledges and asked the nation to judge him on his actions and what he delivers.
At this stage, she was forced to admit that by Forsyth but stressed that ‘These figures were from the end of the year, and you’re right it was a technical recession and it’s a shallow recession’. There may well be more recent figures that are not in the public domain but are available to government ministers hinting it is short-lived. Only time will tell if it is.
General Election Projection (Tatton): In her second Parliamentary spell representing the Cheshire constituency of Tatton on the western boundaries of Greater Manchester; the seat has been blue since 2001 with McVey replacing former Chancellor George Osborne for the 2017 General Election. Since 2001, the Conservative vote share in Tatton has been above 50% with McVey being returned with a 57.7% vote share and a majority of 17,387 in 2019. Typically, it is a fairly safe seat but this could be a closer battle. McVey is projected to take around 40% of the vote with only a 1.6-point lead; down from 2.1 last month which means any tactical voting from Lib Dem or Green voters could play a part. This could be one to watch.
Kami Badenoch
‘There is no evidence…We have no evidence whatsoever that any official said this, and actually, if such a thing was said, it is for Mr Staunton himself to bring the evidence’.
I did not think Kami Bandeoch would feature for a second successive time. It feels cruel to include her again so quickly but she landed into even more controversy in February.
At the end of January, she sacked Henry Staunton as chair of the Post Office which had been embroiled in a scandal and their treatment of post-submasters in the wake of the airing of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office after just over a year in the role. In the words of Lord Stuart Rose, chair of the Asda Group Staunton had been traduced and he didn’t take it quietly.
Following his dismissal, he gave an interview with the Sunday Times suggesting the Business Secretary had told him, ‘Well, someone’s got to take the rap for this’. However, in the interview, he also made the suggestion that upon his appointment in December 2022, claiming that, ‘Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spend on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – limp into the election‘. In other words, so the Conservatives could ‘limp into’ the next General Election.
Naturally, Ms Badenoch stressed these allegations were ‘completely false’. She told MPs in the House of Commons that ‘There is no evidence whatsoever this is true’, arguing that he was seeking revenge for being sacked with the interview he gave to The Times. Of course, all of this was said under Parliamentary privilege so she is protected from any potential libel action if it were proved not to be the case. However, if any evidence did exist and she had knowledge of it, she could be accused of misleading Parliament which can ultimately lead to her suspension.
Mr Staunton did provide evidence.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter he posted a letter from Sarah Munby, permanent under-secretary of State welcoming him to the role. The letter gave him three areas to focus on. The first was, ‘Effective financial management and performance, including effective management of legal costs, to ensure medium term viability’. What on earth does that mean? Reaching settlements with the Horizon claimants was the third area of focus. However, it is hard to see given that effective management of legal costs was placed as a higher priority in the letter than coming to settlements, just how it could be interpreted as anything other than trying to massage or stretch out the payment of compensation so it could be better managed on the financial spreadsheets.
Additionally, a memo from Ms Munby was unearthed and shared with The Times where she warned him that ‘now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues’. Emailing the note to himself and Nick Read who was Post Office Chief Executive at the time, he added she said ‘we needed to know that in the run-up to the election there was no appetite to ‘rip off the band aid’…We needed a plan to ‘hobble’ up to the election’.
It comes down to who would you believe? The former chair of the Post Office or the Business Secretary?
Swiftly following this, allegations came to light that the Business Secretary may have misled the House of Commons on an entirely separate matter; the state of free trade talks with Canada. She had stressed in Parliament in January that talks had not broken down and they were still ongoing. However, that was news to Canada as their high commissioner to the UK, Ralph Goodale contradicted her, telling MPs that no talks had taken place. Given this occurred so soon after the Staunton revelations, it would not be surprising to hear that perhaps Mr Staunton is the more reliable individual in this case.
General Election Projection (Saffron Walden): What I did not do in January was provide data based on the North West Essex constituency which will succeed from Ms Badenoch’s Saffron Walden seat due to the Boundary Commission changes. Ms Bandeoch had been the Saffron Walden MP (a seat that has been Tory since 1929) since 2017 and was returned in 2019 with a majority of 27.594. In the North West Essex projections, she is predicted to get 46.85% of the vote with only extreme tactical voting from Lib Dem and Green voters towards Labour as the only risk to her. She will surely be looking at running for leader of the Conservatives when they are in opposition.
Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson
‘I may have been sacked because I spoke out against the appeasement of Islamists, but I would do it again because we need to wake up to what we are sleep-walking into: a ghettoised society where free expression and British values are diluted. Where sharia law, the Islamist mob and anti-Semites take over communities.’
Suella Braverman
‘I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is that they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London’
Lee Anderson
‘We have towns and cities around the United Kingdom where multiculturalism has failed, where communities are living parallel lives…where people come here and they don’t speak the language. Where they come here and don’t want to take part in British life. They don’t want to integrate. In fact, they actually loathe what Britain stands for. They are in Britain but not of Britain’
Suella Braverman
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, perhaps still with future leadership ambitions in mind, spoke up again. Writing in The Telegraph under a piece headlined, ‘Islamists are bullying Britain into submission’, she seemed to rewrite the history of her sacking while arguing that Islamic views and an imagined implementation of sharia law are threatening the British way of life. Her husband is Jewish so from that perspective, I can understand why she has been vocal about the pro-Palestinian marches that have taken place in London and why the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ being projected onto Big Ben may cause her concern. However, her language ventures into the realm of the far-right!
She comes from a position of concern regarding anti-semitism and her successor, James Cleverly described her as ‘clearly expressing frustrations that she’s felt while she was in the role‘. However, Lord Mann, the government’s independent advisor on anti-semitism claimed on X, formerly Twitter that as Home Secretary, Braverman ‘ignored the advice I provided on how to tackle anti-semitism and issues for her department. In fact, she never even bothered to read them. Her inaction in office is a part of the problem’.
So, let’s briefly discuss Braverman’s time as Home Secretary as she claimed she was sacked amongst other things for speaking out against the ‘appeasement of Islamists’.
She has held the role twice. The first time, she resigned over a clear breach of the ministerial code (that does not happen much) for sharing an official government document from her personal email address to a parliamentary colleague although resigning was a more thinly veiled dig at Liz Truss. The second time did not go as she suggested either. In October, her comments regarding the pro-Palestinian marches calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were increasingly divisive, calling them hate marches’. Her role became untenable however, after comments questioning the operational integrity of the Metropolitan Police contributed to bringing the police into danger that weekend due to far-right thuggery led by the usual suspects including Tommy Robinson.
Braverman would later double down on these comments with even more divisive remarks (the second attributed to her above). This time, they were made on GB News in an interview with Patrick Christy. In this interview, she peddled her argument that multiculturalism has failed even though she is proof of the opposite. Without multiculturalism, would the daughter of migrants from Mauritius and Kenya have ever made it to Home Secretary of the UK Government?
The language is abhorrent. I can’t imagine integrating into a society in a new country is easy; I certainly don’t think it is as easy as clicking your fingers and that’s it, you’ve integrated. However, to go to the extent of saying that immigrants ‘loathe’ the country they have come to so they make a new life is just feeding further into the far right with divisive rhetoric is not what this country needs at present and any compassionate politician should really know better.
Lee Anderson went one further and made the Islamophobic comments personal; targeting the mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Live on air with GB News, the former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party made this outburst about Khan. Don’t believe that’s Islamophobic? If Sadiq Khan were Jewish and if someone said he’d given London to the Jews, then that is anti-semitism. That makes it Islampahobic. It also has no foundation in fact. Just a quick browse of Khan’s X, formerly Twitter feed and it showcases a host of diversity schemes and pledges.
After 24 hours, Anderson lost the Tory Whip. However, the Prime Minster could not bring himself to say why Anderson had lost the Whip. Ministers attempted to cover up the Islamophobia, saying what he said was wrong but not saying the word although none could cover it better than the BBC did who labelled it as ‘criticism’. The implications of the statement were also that had Anderson apologised for the remarks, he would have kept the Whip. However, he refused and later doubled down claiming it is a sign of weakness to apologise when you know you’re right.
He isn’t apologetic but it says it all about the weakness of the Tory Party and their blindspot to Islamaphobia, which Kami Badenoch would rather refer to as ‘anti-muslim hate’, that an apology would have sufficed! Again, you can only imagine the response if that had been the response to a Labour MP saying something anti-Semitic. This is not trying to be whataboutery but Islamaphobia and anti-semitism are both forms of racism. It reeks of double standards.
It also raises question marks how despite the comments being similar in nature, Anderson lost the whip while Braverman did not. I can offer perhaps two explanations. One; Anderson’s comments targeted one individual in particular while Braverman’s comments were not as targeted. Events since then have made me inclined to believe that Sunak may hold similar beliefs. Two; just as Sunak was reluctant to sack Braverman back in October and still as he did then, fears that enough letters will go in to trigger a leadership contest. It is perhaps the same reason why Liz Truss retains the Conservative Whip. He put his own personal position first and opted not to.
General Election Projections (Fareham): Located to the southwest of Southampton, the Fareham constituency covers much of the commuter belt between Southampton and Portsmouth and includes the town of Fareham. The constituency will be renamed Fareham and Waterlooville at the next Election. Ms Braverman has held the current seat since 2015 which has been Conservative acne its creation in 1885. In 2019, she returned with the highest vote share for the seat in the postwar era; 63.7% with a 26,086 majority. Although Conservative voters have an unfavourable view of her and despite more than a projected 20-point swing, she is expected to get around 48% at present. That would be enough for her to hold onto her seat and potentially, her spot in the next leadership ballot leading a reduced Conservative Party.
General Election Projection (Ashfield): Anderson was highlighted at risk of losing his Ashfield seat to Labour in January’s post. However, having lost the Whip and since defecting to Reform UK, it looks increasingly likely that Anderson will not be in Parliament beyond the General Election. At least he has a job with GB News to fall back on.
The Mind of Rowan 