DAILY MAIL COMMENT: MPs must get behind Rishi or face oblivion

The enormity of the catastrophe the Tory party seems determined to inflict upon itself has been laid bare by Britain’s most distinguished pollster and psephologist.

Sir John Curtice, whose predictions have proved remarkably accurate, says the Conservatives may be heading for their worst defeat at the next election.

From the Red Wall to the southern shires, they face decimation – possibly winning as few as 130 seats and handing Labour a comfortable, even landslide majority.

Try as he might, nothing Rishi Sunak does or announces appears to be moving the dial. The public, Sir John believes, have simply ‘stopped listening’.

Is it any wonder? Echoing the dying days of Theresa May’s doomed administration, the party is once again at war with itself – factionalised, fractious, and febrile. The bitter wrangling over Rwanda epitomises their apparent electoral death wish.

Rishi Sunak may not have a very merry Christmas unless he can begin to shift the dial in the polls 

Sir John Curtice, of the University of Strathclyde, predicts that the Tories could be careering towards their worst electoral defeat ever 

Damian Green, who speaks for the moderate ‘One-Nation’ group of Conservative MPs, says that they should be seen as political ‘herbivores’ versus the ‘carnivores’ from the harder-right ERG group of MPs 

The Prime Minister has come up with a credible plan to get round legal objections to sending cross-Channel asylum seekers to the African country for assessment.

It is a genuine attempt to get this key policy up and running, provide a deterrent to those coming to Britain illegally and break the business model of the traffickers.

Yet the ‘moderate’ One Nation group of Tory backbenchers say the proposed law is too strict, while the European Research Group and others to the Right say it isn’t strict enough.

And while they squabble, the opposition and asylum industry (plus the supposedly impartial star BBC presenter Gary Lineker) make hay, trashing the policy and making proper migration control an ever more distant prospect.

The public voted in this Government on a promise of cutting both legal and illegal immigration. The Tories’ failure to deliver is a betrayal, and unless they can settle their differences, get behind their leader and salvage the Rwanda scheme, they will pay dearly at the ballot box.

Damian Green, spokesman for the One-Nation group, says they are seen as political ‘herbivores’, compared with the ERG ‘carnivores’. Right now, both sides resemble one herbivore in particular. They are like lemmings hurtling towards the clifftop. The message of Sir John’s analysis is clear: Turn back or face oblivion.

A tawdry inquisition

As if Mr Sunak didn’t have enough on his mind, he is up today before the one-eyed inquisitors of the Covid inquiry.

They will no doubt castigate him for trying to revivify the economy after the first lock-down with his Eat Out to Help Out scheme, tacitly accusing him of costing lives.

Rishi Sunak is up today at the Covid inquiry. As Chancellor, his Eat Out to Help Out scheme was accused of causing a spike in Covid cases

There is no real evidence for this. Indeed, he kept families and firms going during the pandemic with furlough cash, preventing them falling into penury and despair.

The Centre for Social Justice is the latest organisation to highlight the enormous and lasting damage done by lockdown, especially to the poor.

But these fat-cat lawyers and politicised pressure groups seem only interested in damning the Government for not locking down sooner, harder and longer. It is a £200million travesty.

UN’s moral failings

Narges Mohammadi, richly deserved winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has spent her life campaigning against Iran’s manifold human rights abuses – especially against women. For her pains, she has been continually imprisoned, and even flogged.

What an appalling indictment of the UN then, that it has seen fit to appoint Iran to the chair of its 2023 Human Rights Forum.

It is an affront to all oppressed women and further evidence that this deeply flawed body (which has been extremely critical of Israel in its war against Iran-sponsored Hamas) has mislaid its moral compass.

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