Kevin Schofield is Politics Editor of HuffPost UK.
It’s not often that a one-word post on X can sum up the mood of an entire parliamentary party, but it happened this week.
On Monday, the worst kept secret in Westminster was confirmed when Lee Anderson – until January a Tory deputy chairman, no less – announced that, with one Tory insider telling HuffPost UK that Sunak had “literally given Anderson” to the right-wing party by suspending him over his attack on Sadiq Khan.
One senior Conservative MP said Sunak was “certain” to face a leadership challenge in the aftermath, with no guarantee that he will survive. “The letters of no confidence are already going in, and we only need 52 to trigger a vote. There are then two scenarios; either the PM decides not to contest it and goes gracefully, or he does contest it and he performs very badly.”Some MPs believe that, if the 1922 Committee is amenable, the party’s rulebook could be changed to allow a leadership election to be wrapped up quickly, with Tory members voting online and a new PM in place by June.
And while they don’t seriously believe a new leader can win the election, they think he or she could at least save enough seats to make the Tories competitive again when the next one comes along.
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