The Penny Has Dropped For Many Tory MPs After A "Bleak" Week

Many Conservative MPs will remember this "bleak" week as the moment when they truly gave up any hope of avoiding defeat to Labour at the next general election.

“Something has changed for me this week," said one veteran Conservative MP.

Up until very recently, the senior Tory back bencher had still harboured a small degree of hope that there remained a path to victory at the next general election for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his beleaguered party, albeit a very narrow and steep one.

Speaking to PoliticsHome heading into this weekend, however, in a conversation which they described as "therapy", this Conservative MP conceded that it was in the last few days when any remaining optimism had been totally extinguished. 

“We have done absolutely everything possible to lose the next election," they said.

"We've gone nuclear.”

The MP explained that no single event or issue had driven them to this point. Not the former deputy chairman of the Tory party Lee Anderson defecting to Reform on Monday. Nor the Frank Hester race row and Downing Street's bungled response.

There was palpable anger and incredulity among Conservative MPs over No 10's initial refusal to call the major party donor's 2019 remarks about Diane Abbott MP racist. There was fury that Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mel Stride, who is a liked and respected figure within the parliamentary Tory party, was asked to repeat that line on the Tuesday morning media around, before it was torn up by Downing Street just hours later. 

Nor was it the frustration shared by many Tory MPs that once again, a major fiscal event delivered by Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, in the form of last week's Spring Budget, was seemingly showing no signs of having moved the dial in a