For how much longer shall Rishi Sunak enjoy the delights of 10 Downing Street? Surely this is an impertinent question? Not so. Like the ground during an earthquake, the soil beneath Mr. Sunak’s feet is no longer solid. An effective prime minister needs terra firma upon which to govern.

A Conservative MP, Nigel Adams, has joined Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries out of the Commons with “immediate effect.” This triggers the need for at least four subsequent by-elections — the fourth is a Scottish National Party politician who was cashiered over flouting Covid restrictions.

Mr. Johnson had his hand forced in July last year when more than 50 MPs resigned from Government duties. Perhaps not wanting to try that particular trick again so soon, this route of triggering expensive bye-elections that the Conservative Party can ill-afford and hardly win, may prove malcontents’ novel way to hobble the current Prime Minister’s hold on power — and lead him inevitably out of office.

Stories circulate ’round Westminster that the Tories will imminently be rent asunder: Johnson loyalists versus Mr. Sunak’s Conservative government. The latter group is well-known, comprising Remainers, Globalists, and the civil service “Blob” — despite most protestations to the contrary. The former group is far more interesting, if inchoate.

At present, its supporters are coalescing around members of the populist Conservative Democratic Organisation, formed in December last year, in response to party rank-and-file who were doubly incensed: First, by having their popular favorite BoJo defenestrated by the parliamentary party. Second, by having their choice in the ensuing leadership election, Liz Truss, pushed from office and Mr. Sunak, the candidate they had rejected, thrust in — without as much as a “by your leave.”

Your Diarist believes this group, for the moment, is “not fit for purpose” as an effective counterforce to the Conservative establishment. For want of a better place to concentrate their forces, this “anti-Rishi” faction of Johnson adherents also contains members from the right of the party — Thatcherites and European Research Group eurosceptics — otherwise known as Brexit Spartans.

It is difficult to see how long this particular alliance will last, in its present configuration. For Mr. Johnson’s own resignation statement to the contrary — “we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda . . . to cut business and personal taxes . . . rather than endlessly putting them up” — he himself was in league with Mr. Sunak when the latter instigated the bulk of these current statist policies as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Furthermore, many of Mr. Johnson’s key policies on climate change, border-and-immigration control, and Ukraine, have been adopted by Mr. Sunak. Even Ms. Truss was in agreement with the spirit of the Johnson-Sunak administration, save for her one truly remarkable stand for free markets, low taxes, and economic growth. And we see where that got her.

Fifteen points behind his Labour opponents in the polls and with building internal party crises coming to a head this weekend, Mr. Sunak has no sure grip on power. Conservative Party sages say it would be suicidal for the caucus to do anything that would force the Prime Minister from office, and for the sake of party unity (and survival) he must remain in harness until the next general election. But why?

In democratic politics, voters are expected to be content with voicing their opinion every two or four years. Yet in the “democracy of the market,” as Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises liked to assert, the “process is a daily repeated plebiscite.” He called this the “sovereignty of the consumers.”

Furthermore, where in electoral politics, generally, there are winners (the majority) and losers (the minority), in the marketplace every “vote” counts, von Mises astutely observed: “This state of affairs has been described by calling the market a democracy in which every penny gives a right to cast a ballot” in “an election daily repeated.”

If ordinary consumers are sovereign in the marketplace, surely they deserve no less as citizens in the democratic halls of power? If Mr. Sunak no longer suits the purposes for which he became Conservative leader and premier, throw . . . him . . . out. There is a catch, however, and a legitimate criticism based on this example of consumer sovereignty.

If grassroot Tory discontent can legitimately usurp Mr. Sunak and replace him with a Conservative MP who will respect the will of the membership, surely UK voters at large deserve no less?

Even under the legitimate theory of the Westminster model that electors vote for a party platform, not a personality, and thus a Government can replace one leader with another according to the axiom “primus inter pares” — first among equals — surely foisting a third unelected prime minister upon the people is too much to bear, especially since it can be argued that the Government has strayed widely from the 2019 manifesto upon it was elected.

So if Mr. Sunak is to follow his predecessors and fall in a political coup, the Conservative conspirators should be certain that his successor at 10 Downing Street is a true friend of Brexit and ready to rally the nation to the populist agenda that has hitherto been cynically frustrated.

Otherwise, it will be nothing more than a futile political theater signifying nothing, other than their own incompetence . . . and there’s no need for a further display of Tory turpitude. 

Which is why word of a possible dark horse collaborator, Nigel Farage, joining with Boris Johnson in a consolidated union of Brexit champions, has excited whispered talk of a third-party challenge to the Westminster duopoly.

BrexitDiarist@gmail.com