Are we witnessing the break-up of the Conservative Party?

Tory tribes gather in WhatsApp groups nowadays and Suella Braverman’s allies are in one devoted to Home Office affairs. They are in meltdown. Had the Home Secretary just gone rogue? Had she really just defied No 10 in accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias? Panicked politicians asked her advisers to confirm, but there was no answer. Rumours about her being fired started to swirl.

It didn’t take long for this to mutate into a full Tory rift. Her Tory enemies urged action: surely this is an outrage too far? Perhaps she was daring Sunak to sack her and is trying to pose as the Home Secretary who stood up for British values when he would not. If so, he should not accept such insubordination. Best fire her – and reshuffle the Cabinet on Monday. 

Don’t dare, say her allies: she’s right. And she’s being loyal. Trying to help by putting steel in the Government’s spine. This pro-Palestinian march is deeply divisive and no one should doubt that Conservatives oppose it. If the Prime Minister is shy about making this point then an effective Home Secretary needs to step in. If this means speaking out of turn with language more direct than No 10 censors wanted, so be it. But voters want straight talking: here it is. 

So we have two dramas this weekend: the Palestinian “solidarity” protest held on Armistice Day and a Tory power battle in which the Home Secretary is in open defiance of the Prime Minister. 

Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, has quite rightly explained that cancelling the march on grounds of taste was not legally possible. They may all regard Saturday’s march as crass, incendiary and disgustingly disrespectful. But this right to protest, especially for a cause the Government loathes, is part of what those wars were fought to defend.

Sunak should have explained this from the offset. He could say that he hates the idea of a protest on Armistice Day, but freedom of speech means nothing unless extended to causes you dislike. Instead, he said he found the march “disrespectful” and that he would hold police “accountable”. But he switched to supportive language after meeting Sir Mark. Odd behaviour, which underlines the idea of chaos.

All this is against a backdrop of Tory misery, with ministers resigned to electoral defeat and thinking of the leadership battle that comes afterwards. The topic of conversation, now, is not whether they will lose but how much by. Whether a crash-landing is possible, saving perhaps 250 of the 350 MPs, or whether they will end up with a rump of 130 destined to head off to the lunatic fringes. “At this rate,” one party pessimist tells me, “the next Tory King’s Speech will be given by a different king”.

The October 7 atrocities were intended to polarise debate and end the Arab-Israeli rapprochement. But they have polarised opinion here, too, with Labour MPs rebelling and one resigning from Keir Starmer’s frontbench in protest at his refusal to call for a ceasefire. There’s talk of independent pro-Palestine candidates running against Labour MPs. But several Tories think all this is good for Starmer. That every nutty Labour councillor that resigns in protest makes him look more dependable and ready for office, while Conservatives feud.

Like recovering alcoholics who steer clear of the bottle, Tories quite often step away from blue-on-blue battle knowing that they may find it impossible to stop. Liz Truss was torn apart by warring tribes and Sunak’s truce was a gamble on all of their parts. Let’s try unity one last time, was his unspoken message. “You’re not wild about me. But if we keep fighting now, we all go down together.”

This seemed to work, at least at first. He chose his Cabinet as a coalition, making sure every Tory faction had its champion. The Cameroons had Andrew Mitchell; the Brexiteers were given Braverman. The One Nation caucus could keep Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor (or, under Sunak, notetaker). The GB News contingent had Lee Anderson as deputy party chairman, throwing the occasional verbal bomb. Only one tribe was left in the cold: the Boris Johnson loyalists. Sunak drew the line at sending Nadine Dorries to the Lords.

Had the economy picked up, had mortgage rates not returned to Trussite levels, had the Starmer project imploded, then it could be working well by now. But here we are, a year out from an election and the Government is marooned almost 20 points behind in the polls. Critics say that Sunak is comfortable chatting to Elon Musk in AI summits but can’t handle the grubbier, trench warfare politics now underway. So Tories start acting alone, no longer fearing No 10’s censure.

Sunak’s would-be successors are already taking soundings, having lunch meetings to set out their stalls. Each of them has the same message: that the choice is not between victory and defeat, but defeat and annihilation. But what’s the alternative? The mayhem of recent years means no Conservatives can play the competence card. Nor the low-tax card.

There’s an argument to be made on values and identity politics, but not much interest in doing so. Some feel their party is a corpse without a cause, so start articulating their own ideas, with or without permission. Expect more of this in coming months.

Sunak is more ahimsa than assassin and his response to Braverman has been strategic forgiveness, saying she still has his “full confidence”. He can’t afford rupture because he knows how it would spiral. But if he won’t retaliate, her enemies (who regard her as an ineffective blowhard) may well do so. Some are threatening to speak out unless she has been sacked by the weekend. Whips calling around MPs to see if anyone else is likely to detonate have been told that Braverman has many fervent supporters who will not tolerate her dismissal.

All told, it’s becoming very easy to see what a proper Tory crack-up will look like. And harder to be sure that it hasn’t started already.