The shattered Tories may yet face a fate even worse than political death

Might it be time to give the public their fifth Tory prime minister in six years? Absolutely not, said James Cleverly today. “Changing the leadership would be a disastrously bad idea, not just politically but economically.” What’s striking is not really the Foreign Secretary’s argument, but that he felt he had to make it. In just five weeks, Liz Truss has whittled through all the stages of leadership and is now in the last: a fight for survival. The question is how many policies (or people) will be jettisoned in the process.

Just three weeks ago she felt bold enough to refuse to share mini-Budget details with her Cabinet, announcing tax cuts without saying how she would fund them. The audacity marked a clean break with Tory past, but her party wasn’t sure if they were watching the arrival of the low-tax cavalry or the Charge of the economic Light Brigade.

Most have now concluded that it’s the latter, with polls showing the Conservatives charging into the valley of death. Her meeting with backbenchers this week was not even rowdy. The mood was one of murderous despair.

Many of the MPs who were at that 1922 Committee meeting say it was the worst one they can remember. “If I was interviewing a prospective Tory candidate who was as unable to answer questions as she was, I’d refuse to give them the job,” says one ex-Cabinet member. “Boris could at least speak to us like a cheated-on wife, asking us to remember the good times,” says another MP. “It’s harder for her, because there haven’t been any good times.” One ex-Cabinet member is more blunt: “After that meeting, I would not give tuppence for her survival chances.”

Johnson once observed that the herd instinct in Westminster is hard to resist. “When the herd moves,” he said, “it moves.” The herd is against Ms Truss. But where can it go? To consider the various options being touted – Rishi by Christmas, the (Kit) Malthouse compromise, the Boris restoration – is to appreciate their absurdity.

Do the Tories wish to outdo Italy in the sheer number of leaders that can be foisted on a country without the trouble of general elections? Is this Prime Minister to be given no chance at all?

But with polls pointing to Keir Starmer winning by a margin approaching two-votes-to-one, these are desperate times for the Tories. If today’s polls were tomorrow’s general election results, less than a third of the current 356 Tory MPs would survive.

This focuses the minds of the remaining two-thirds: I’m told there are Tories with 20,000 majorities worrying about their seats. To a lot of them, the choice is no longer between victory and defeat, but between shades of defeat. This has changed the calculation.

The Tory MPs are, broadly speaking, in three camps. The optimists think that the markets may calm down (with inflation peaking this month) and that some scandal may befall Labour. Meanwhile, Ms Truss collects herself and starts doing a better job at selling her pro-growth agenda. And then – miracles may well happen – her party might actually get behind her, realising that she’s the best leader they’ve got. So no more government-by-speed-dating. They would wait for the results of her policies.

It might be quite a wait. She admitted in her meeting with MPs this week that her tax cuts are pretty modest, all things considered. By some calculations they’d take the tax burden back to where it was only last year. So where is the great supply-side boost? “There are 20 big supply-wide changes we can do without legislation or money,” says one supportive Cabinet member. “But you may not see the results until after the election.”

And before the election? At the Tory conference she promised “growth, growth, growth”, but what if the various economists are right in predicting recession? The tax cuts may simply be too small to offset strengthening economic headwinds. With interest rates rising worldwide, the overall economic hit might have been even greater without the tax cuts – but few Tories feel confident about being able to make that argument on the doorstep.

The second group of MPs says Ms Truss must be visibly humbled. They think that the prospect of credible rebellion – from a party well-versed in regicide – would force her to perform an act of penance: a corporation tax rise, say, or another tax rise to dilute her cuts. A U-turn may well now be on the way. Neither her Chancellor nor her Foreign Secretary would rule it out yesterday. So she would stay, but humiliated. A prisoner of her party, just as Theresa May came to be.

A final group thinks that it’s all over, and that the next election is already lost – so a new pilot is needed to perform a crash landing. This means ejecting Ms Truss now, in full knowledge of how ridiculous this would make the Tories look in the eyes of the country and the world. As one new-intake MP puts it: “If we carry on as we are, we’ll lose by 250 seats. But if we make a change, we lose by 50 seats.” This would mean finding a unity candidate to assure the markets – although there isn’t much unity around who this would be.

A fourth option, mentioned by some Tories in moments of despair, would be a snap election to plunge Labour into the current mess and accelerate the renewal process. But there is no serious appetite for this. “The only thing we all agree on is that there can’t be an election now,” says one of those hoping to depose Ms Truss. “Too many of us simply wouldn’t come back from it.”

Of course, there could be an even worse option: that Ms Truss caves, gives up on her agenda, increases taxes and then just staggers on anyway. In doing so she’d become pointless, an emblem of a Conservative Party drained of ideas and personnel, unable to enact its own agenda and regarding its principles as politically unsellable.

This would be a rare example of a fate worse than political death. So yes, things are indeed pretty bad for the Tories – but that’s not to say they can’t get worse still.