The Tories’ ‘suicidal treachery’ will be their undoing

Boris Johnson’s intervention over the Northern Ireland protocol was not unexpected, given the former prime minister’s penchant for seeking to protect what he sees as his Downing Street legacy. But a number of senior Conservatives have been forthright about the dire effect they believe it will have on their party.

Sir Alan Duncan has called it “suicidal treachery” that will drive voters towards Labour. He is joined in this view by Tobias Ellwood, who says that such “undermining” of Rishi Sunak will only serve to “scupper” the Conservative Party’s election prospects for the sake of Mr Johnson’s personal political gain. They have a point.

The Independent has made clear that Mr Sunak deserves credit for the progress he has made on the Northern Ireland protocol, which could herald a more productive relationship with the EU. While the UK will never see the return of some of the benefits lost through Brexit, there is an obvious purpose in laying the groundwork – building trust – for easier relations in the future.

Yet, Mr Johnson and his allies clearly do not see it that way. They believe that Britain needs to push through with the legislation that would allow it to scrap parts of the protocol when it needs to – but we have already seen the fruits such continuous brinkmanship can bear.

The emergence of this kind of factional dispute, in which some in the Conservative Party seem to delight, was always a risk when Mr Sunak took over in Downing Street, given that the party had spent much of the previous year essentially tearing itself apart. Mr Johnson and his successor, Liz Truss, left a number of messes that the current prime minister has been tasked with clearing up; their sniping from the sidelines does not change that.

Mr Johnson knows that the Northern Ireland protocol is a matter on which it is easy to rile up dissent, and there are a number of Tory backbenchers who are not shy in voicing their displeasure at the idea of any degree of compromise with the EU. But there has to be some movement. It is clear that things cannot stay as they are. Voters are growing tired of the issue dragging on – with the general state of the economy and their own finances a concern – and Mr Sunak has recognised this.

How to spur economic growth while bringing down inflation is another area in which Conservative dissent is not hard to find. A letter signed by a number of senior Conservative backbenchers has urged Mr Sunak to reverse his plans for a six-percentage-point rise in corporation tax – from 19 to 25 per cent – in April. The argument is that this will bring growth via new investment.

But was this not the same thought process that drove Ms Truss’s economic plan? The one that crashed the markets and pushed Ms Truss towards her exit of No. 10? Mr Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, are still dealing with the fallout from that particular economic vision, so the prime minister is unlikely to welcome such input as he tries to convince voters that his government can push the UK economy forward.

As for Mr Johnson, whatever his interventions on the Nothern Ireland protocol, his influence on his party’s future electoral prospects may still be most keenly felt through the Partygate scandal and the parliamentary inquiry into whether he misled MPs over rule-breaking gatherings in Downing Street.

The privileges committee is working its way through evidence handed over by the government at the end of last year, and whatever the findings of its final report – when it arrives – are sure to cast a shadow over the current prime minister and his government, too.

The country needs an effective government that works to make day-to-day life better for its citizens, rather than politicians merely out for personal gain. The actions of his predecessors in Downing Street have only made the job more difficult for Mr Sunak – and they would do well to remember this before making his task harder still.