Rishi Sunak: How Tory MPs can get rid of the prime minister – and who could be in the running to replace him
Rishi Sunak looks to have seen off his backbenchers – at least for now.
The nascent rebellions have gone quiet in the past few weeks and the Commons is currently in its Easter recess, with MPs returning to Westminster on 15 April.
Time away from parliament normally strengthens – or at least prevents the further collapse – of a prime minister, as MPs disperse back to their constituencies and away from the plot-heavy fug of Westminster.
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But a potential flashpoint is looming – May’s local elections.
A particularly bad performance by the Tories could lead to fresh pressure on the PM’s leadership and prove to be the catalyst for a concrete move to oust Mr Sunak.
Sky News explains how Tory MPs could get rid of the PM and – if they are successful – who would likely be in the running to replace him.
How to depose a prime minister
The process of removing a Tory leader is governed by the 1922 Committee – also known as the ’22 – a group of backbench Tory MPs.
If a Conservative MP wants a new leader, they write to the head of the ’22 saying they have no confidence in the incumbent.
The chair of the committee is Sir Graham Brady.
Under party rules, 15% of Tory MPs need to write to Sir Graham in order to trigger a vote. Currently, there are 348 MPs, meaning the 15% threshold sits at 53.
There is often lots of speculation about how many letters have been submitted, but the only person who truly knows is Sir Graham himself.
Sir Graham Brady has overseen numerous Tory leadership contests since becoming chair of the 1922 committee in 2010. Pic: PA
When the threshold is met, Sir Graham will make an announcement to the media.
There would then be a vote of all Tory MPs on whether to unseat Mr Sunak. If a majority say they have no confidence in him (50% +1) a leadership contest is triggered.
Mr Sunak would be barred from standing in the subsequent contest.
However, if the leader wins a vote of no confidence, they are then immune from a further such challenge for a year.
This happened with Theresa May in 2018, although she opted to resign a few months later amid continuing struggles to get a Brexit deal passed by MPs.
Theresa May survived a vote of no confidence, but it proved to be a brief respite. Pic: PA
Her successor Boris Johnson also survived a confidence vote of Tory MPs in June 2022, but emerged from the ordeal weakened as a significant number of Conservatives (148, 41%) voted against him.
He announced his resignation a little more than a month later.
Are there any other circumstances in which the PM could go?
Another way Mr Sunak could be ousted is if the so-called “men in grey suits” tell him to step aside and he heeds their advice.
This is when senior Conservative MPs – like Sir Graham – tell the party leader they do not have the support of the party, and should step aside to save the ignominy of the above votes.
Of course, Mr Sunak could decide himself that the game is up and opt to jump before he is potentially pushed, but this is unlikely.
How would the contest pan out?
The exact rules for the contest would be set out by the ’22 after it is triggered.
Nominations for candidates would likely open quickly, with prospective leaders needing the support of a certain number of colleagues to stand.
Once nominations have closed, there would then be rounds of voting among Tory MPs for their preferred new leader. The worst-performing candidate in each ballot would be eliminated, until just two remain.
This pair would then compete for the votes of Conservative Party members, slugging it out to become party leader and prime minister.
This is what happened in the summer of 2022, when Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were left as the last two candidates in the race to succeed Mr Johnson.
They then spent the summer campaigning for votes, with Ms Truss emerging victorious.
However, there have been examples in recent years of truncated contests.
The most recent of which was the second leadership contest of 2022, which Mr Sunak won unopposed after Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt pulled out.
In 2016, Tory members also didn’t get a chance to have their say.
Theresa May won both ballots of MPs, but she then became party leader unopposed after rival Andrea Leadsom pulled out in the wake of a controversial newspaper interview she later apologised for.
Will there be an election if there’s a new leader and PM?
In short, no.
Under our parliamentary system, the prime minister is leader of the largest party in the Commons.
If the Tories decide to get rid of Sunak and replace him, there is no legal obligation upon the party or the new leader to seek a fresh mandate from the electorate straight away.
The new PM could decide to call an election soon after taking office anyway, or they could wait it out until January 2025.
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Labour’s Gordon Brown didn’t call an election when he succeeded Sir Tony Blair as PM in 2007, although he did flirt with the idea of a snap poll.
The aforementioned Theresa May did go to the country early, but this was almost a year after she took office. Boris Johnson did call an election within a few months of entering Number 10, winning a big Tory majority in December 2019.
Neither Ms Truss or Mr Sunak opted to call an election on becoming PM, although it should be noted the former didn’t get much of a chance as she was in office for less than six weeks.
Who is likely to be in the running to succeed Sunak if he goes?
Given there is not long before there absolutely has to be an election – January 2025 at the very latest – and the polls suggest the Tories are on course for defeat, you might expect the field of likely contenders to succeed Mr Sunak to be quite narrow.
But a number of names have been suggested as potential replacements if he goes.
The defence secretary has emerged as someone who could look to run for the top job, having called for defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP – something that could win the support of Tory backbenchers.
Grant Shapps, who has also served as transport secretary, previously ran to be Tory leader in 2022.
The home secretary, who has also served as foreign secretary, is being talked about in moderate Tory circles as someone who could unify the party.
A key part of James Cleverly’s brief as home secretary is the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda – something he is said to have reservations about in private, despite his denials.
He caused controversy last year – and was forced to apologise – after making a joke about date rape which he admitted may have undermined the government’s work to tackle drink spiking.
Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, is seen as the darling of the right and has impressed some in the party with her no-nonsense approach.
One of her strongest advocates is Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary who has also run for leader in the past.
Ms Badenoch ran in the last Tory leadership of 2022 following Mr Johnson’s resignation, in which she was eliminated in the fourth ballot.
Penny Mordaunt has been at the heart of the rumours of a plot to replace Mr Sunak, although the Commons leader has insisted she is “getting on” with her job.
She has been mooted as a “compromise” candidate for those on the rightF because of her Brexit credentials and her performances in the Commons.
She is viewed as one of the more centrist figures in the party, but current polling suggests she could lose her seat at the next election.
Former home secretary Priti Patel, who now sits on the backbenches, was a key torchbearer for the right before she was eclipsed by Suella Braverman following the demise of Mr Johnson.
She is seen as flying below the radar but making important interventions on tax, for example.
Ms Patel is seen as one the more traditional right-wing MPs in the party, compared with her successor Ms Braverman, who holds appeal with some of the Tory MPs elected in 2019. Her seat of Witham in Essex is also one of the safest in the country.
Robert Jenrick has held a number of ministerial roles, including as communities secretary, a position he lost in one of Boris Johnson’s reshuffles.
He was originally seen as a Sunak loyalist and was appointed immigration minister, partly to keep Ms Braverman in check.
However, he later hit the headlines when he resigned over Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill, saying he could not continue in government when he had such “strong disagreements with the direction of the government’s policy on immigration”.
Suella Braverman has cultivated a reputation on the right as someone who is not afraid to voice controversial opinions on immigration and law and order.
She was brought in by Mr Sunak to cater to the right of the party, where she commanded support.
However, her sacking as home secretary – over comments that homelessness was a “lifestyle choice” – may have affected her standing among Tory MPs.
Tom Tugendhat is regarded highly in the One Nation group of moderate Tory MPs.
He has previously run for Tory leader, but was knocked out of the race early and later threw his support behind Liz Truss.
His recent intervention on defence spending suggests he could decide to run for the top job again.
Rachel Reeves is fighting claims that she “lied” to the public about the state of the finances in the run-up to last Wednesday’s budget – in which she raised £26bn in taxes.
It follows a letter published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the official watchdog which draws up forecasts for the Treasury, published on Friday.
In it, OBR chair Richard Hughes (who is already under fire for the leak of the budget measures) said he’d taken the unusual step of revealing the forecasts it had submitted to Rachel Reeves in the 10 weeks before the budget, and which is normally shrouded in secrecy.
The OBR sent this table revealing its timings and outcomes of the fiscal forecasts reported to the Treasury
Sir Keir Starmer congratulates Rachel Reeves after the budget
The letter reveals this timeline, which has plunged the chancellor into trouble:
17 September – first forecast
At this point, it was already known that the UK’s growth forecast would be downgraded. The chancellor was told that the “increases in real wages and inflation” would offset the impact of the downgrade. The deficit forecast by the end of the parliament was £2.5bn.
20 October – second forecast
By this point, that deficit had turned into a small surplus of £2.1bn – i.e. the productivity downgrade has been wiped out and “both of the government’s fiscal targets were on course to be met”.
31 October – third forecast
The final one before the Treasury put forward its measures. The finances were now net positive with a £4.2bn surplus.
But the accusation is that Rachel Reeves was presenting an entirely different picture – that she had a significant black hole which needed to be filled.
13 October
Ms Reeves tells Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates the productivity downgrade has been challenging but added: “I won’t duck those challenges. Of course we’re looking at tax and spending.”
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27 October
With the Treasury now aware the deficit had been wiped out, the Financial Times was briefed about a “£20bn hit to public finances.”
4 November
Ms Reeves gave a dawn news conference in Downing Street, setting the stage for tax rises. She says she wants people “to understand the circumstances we are facing… productivity performance is weaker than previously thought”, adding that “we will all have to contribute”.
10 November
Ms Reeves tells BBC 5Live that sticking to Labour’s promises not to raise taxes would require “things like deep cuts in capital spending”. The stage seemed set for the nuclear option – the first income tax rise in decades.
13 November
After headlines about a plot to oust Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Financial Times reported that the chancellor had dropped plans to raise income tax because of improved forecasts [which we now know hadn’t changed since 31 October], putting the black hole closer to £20bn than £30bn.
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Budget 2025: ‘It’s sickening’
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‘You’ve broken a manifesto pledge, haven’t you?’
The prime minister’s spokesperson has insisted Ms Reeves did not mislead voters and set out her choices, and the reasons for them, at the budget.
But the issue has had enormous cut-through, with newspapers giving it top billing.
The Sun’s Saturday front page headline – “Chancer of the Exchequer – fury at Reeves ‘lies’ over £30bn black hole” – will not have been pleasant reading for ministers.
She now has questions to answer about the chaotic run-up to the budget – of briefing and counter-briefing, which critics say now makes little sense.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said on Saturday: “We have learned that the chancellor misrepresented the OBR’s forecasts. She sold her ‘Benefits Street’ budget on a lie. Honesty matters… she has to go.”
Economist Paul Johnson, former director of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), told The Times the chancellor’s 4 November news briefing “probably was misleading. It was clearly intended to have an impact and confirm what independent forecasters like [the National Institute of Economic and Social Research] and the IFS had been saying”.
“It was designed to confirm a narrative that there was a fiscal hole that needed to be filled with significant tax rises. In fact, as she knew at the time, no such hole existed.”
Read more on budget fallout:
Reeves accused over forecasts
Hospitality ‘needs a lifeline’
Ms Reeves is doing a round of morning interviews on Sunday in which she’ll be grilled over which of her budget measures will generate economic growth (which the government claimed was its number one priority), why they have been unable to tackle rising welfare spending and now about why markets and voters were left confused by dire warnings.
She may claim that she never personally said there was a specific £30bn black hole or that the extra headroom generated by the tax rises will ensure she does not have to come back for more next year.
In an interview with The Saturday’s Guardian, Ms Reeves said she had “chosen to protect public spending” on schools and hospitals in the budget.
She confirmed an income tax rise had been looked at, and insisted that OBR forecasts “move around” after the Treasury has submitted its planned measures. There are plenty more questions to come.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir will use a speech on Monday to support Ms Reeves’ budget decisions and set out his long-term growth plans.
He will praise the budget for bearing down on the cost of living, ensuring economic stability through greater headroom, lower inflation and a commitment to fiscal rules, and protecting investment and public services.
Sir Keir will say “economic growth is beating the forecasts”, but that the government must go “further and faster” to encourage it.
Politics
Lammy says justice reforms will reduce victims’ suffering – as right to jury trial set to go in some cases
Victims will be put “front and centre” in reforms to be announced this week, the justice secretary has said, amid reports jury trials will be scrapped in some cases.
Sky News understands ministers have already been briefed on the changes, which would see a judge decide most cases on their own except for murder, rape or manslaughter – or those in the “public interest”.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said the reforms would speed up justice and save victims from “years of torment and delay”.
Nearly 80,000 cases are currently waiting to be heard in crown courts, but a bid to limit the right to jury trial is likely to be divisive.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said Mr Lammy should “pull his finger out” to cut the backlog rather than “depriving British citizens of ancient liberties”.
“The right to be tried by our peers has existed for more than 800 years – it is not to be casually discarded when the spreadsheets turn red,” said Mr Jenrick.
Full details are expected in the coming days, but in a statement today Mr Lammy said he had “inherited a courts emergency; a justice system pushed to the brink”.
“We will not allow victims to suffer the way they did under the last government, we must put victims front and centre of the justice system,” he added.
Mr Lammy said thousands of lives were on hold due to the case backlog, a “rape victim being told their case won’t come before a court until 2029. A mother who has lost a child at the hands of a dangerous driver, waiting to see justice done”.
He said he wanted a system that “finally gives brave survivors the justice they deserve”.
The justice secretary will reportedly go further than a review recommended. Pic: PA
.However, it’s been reported Mr Lammy will go further than a review conducted by Sir Brian Leveson.
The retired judge backed the move for juries only in the most serious cases, but also proposed some lesser offences could go to a new intermediate court where a judge would be joined by two lay magistrates.
The Times said Mr Lammy had suggested in an internal memo he would remove the lay element from many serious offences that carry sentences of up to five years.
There are fears such a move could increase miscarriages of justice and racial discrimination.
Read more from Sky News:
Reeves fighting ‘lie’ claims as Starmer set to back budget
Your Party co-founder refuses to enter conference hall
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Work and pensions secretary speaks to Sky about justice reforms
Speaking to Sky News’ Politics Hub programme this week, work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden did not deny the changes were on the way.
The MoJ has laid the ground for the reforms by saying the court backlog could hit 100,000 by 2028 under the current system.
It said just 3% of cases are currently decided by a jury, with more than 90% already dealt with by magistrates alone.
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