I was with Liz Truss at the end – here’s how the Tory blame game will play out after defeat

Whenever a disaster happens, we expect those in charge to reassure us that lessons will be learned. I know this only too well, having watched from inside Downing Street the unravelling of the Truss 49-day premiership.

Then, Rishi Sunak stepped up to pull the Conservatives back together. But now his party is braced for general election disaster. How will they pick up the pieces this time?

First, the Tories will first look for someone to take the hit. With the same speed they rounded on Liz Truss after the mini-Budget, they will zero in on Sunak. He was singularly responsible for rushing unprepared into the election – nine days on, the Tories are still scrabbling for candidates to fill their seat vacancies. Even his cabinet were surprised by his timing; he went to the King before telling them, in case they didn’t like it.

This first full week of electioneering has continued a theme that began with his dousing at the Downing Street lectern as he announced the election – the theme being that nothing is going right for Sunak and his team. If the prime minister wants to be seen as the man with a plan, it helps to have a plan not to be derailed by a photo opportunity.

He has campaigned at the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic – iceberg ahead, prime minister! He has been photographed on a plane under its ‘exit’ sign.

Having last week put his foot in things by asking voters in Barry if they were looking forward to the Euros, despite Wales not having qualified, this week he was mocked when he attempted some on-pitch drills but appeared never to have kicked a ball before.

Sunak may have wanted this campaign to show him as a man of the people, especially after criticism that he is out of touch and uses too many private jets. But when he caught the sleeper train to Penzance to campaign in Cornwall, he seemed so genuinely giddy about it, social media users asked if he had ever been on a train before.

Tory HQ is clearly feeling the pressure, as shown by an internal memo criticising MPs for not putting their backs into the election campaign being accidentally emailed to them all. That will do little to motivate those still sore about being thrown into an election at short notice.

Election day is still weeks away, but the Tory blame game is in full flow.

To defy his doubters, Sunak must make the biggest political comeback in modern British history. His campaign record – from the 2022 Tory leadership to countless by-elections and this year’s local elections – offers scant evidence he is capable of that.

Sunak seems aware of this, judging by his decidedly defensive campaign focussing on shoring up the Tory vote, stemming losses rather than winning new seats. And yet many sitting MPs have rushed for the exit, rather than stay to face the music; some of those who are standing have gone on holiday, rather than face the electorate. One ministerial adviser lamented to me: “We’ll all be having to get new jobs soon”; another senior operative said: “Thank God it’ll all be over soon, I’ve got a job interview on 5 July.”

Barring a miraculous turnaround in the polls, the Tories can expect to embark on a grisly post-mortem. They will know that lessons need to be learned. The hard part will be deciding what they are. It will be critical to shaping the party’s future.

The first lesson the Tories will draw is that, in hindsight, they should not have held a July election – there’s a reason the last one was in 1945. But they can only take so much comfort in running counterfactuals about whether the party could have had an easier fight in an autumn or winter election.

When pondering what could have been done to avert defeat, Sunak’s sympathisers will argue that he offered the right Conservative agenda, but could only do so much at the helm of a party riven with toxic in-fighting and tarnished by the calamitous endings of his two predecessors.

His sceptics will say Sunak’s limp, vision-free managerialism drove core supporters away to the likes of Reform UK. Far from being a full-chested cheerleader for the Rwanda plan, he went soft on its rollout, the complaints from Suella Braverman and others falling on deaf ears.

In defeat, Sunak’s supporters may be inclined to blame this on the judgement of Tory members, echoing the ally of David Cameron who notoriously dubbed them “swivel-eyed loons”. Yet if a Tory leader struggles to woo their own grassroots, how can they win around the nation at large? The party will also need members more than ever in the wake of election defeat to keep selling their message.

Defeat won’t be the fault of any single personality. There will be no use blaming shadowy plots working in cahoots with the leftie “deep state”, as voters will see such conspiracy theories as little more than lurid excuses for failure.

Defeat will be a collective humiliation. Recovery will take time. It will require a leader who won’t pander to a particular Tory faction with easy answers, but be ready to tell the party hard truths.

Labour has spent 14 years fighting to show it has learned lessons since 2010, and has changed for the better. The Tories’ route out of the political wilderness will depend on how fast they learn and adapt. Choosing a new leader to replace Sunak will be central to that new mission.

When Sunak first ran to be prime minister, he urged his party not to fall for “fairy tales”. If the Tories succumb to similarly simple stories post-election, they risk finding themselves stuck in electoral neverland.

Asa Bennett is a journalist and former ministerial speechwriter