Anti-Sunak plot is both serious and silly

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Good morning. England’s senior doctors have narrowly rejected a government pay offer, raising the prospect of further NHS strikes. I’ll bring you more on the re-eruption of industrial disputes next week, as today’s note reacts to yet another spat in the Tory party. Some longer thoughts on what the latest round of blue-on-blue is about and what it means below.

Our sold-out Inside Politics pub quiz is fast approaching on Wednesday! Please let us know if you can no longer make it so we can get back to people on the wait list.

Hung out to dry

A war of words has broken out between allies of Rishi Sunak and those of Suella Braverman about how the name of Will Dry, the ex-Downing Street aide turned anti-Sunakite, ended up in the papers. Here are the details from our team’s excellent wrap of the week:

Sunak’s allies claim that Dry’s move into the anti-Sunak camp was leaked by former ministerial advisers to Braverman to give the false impression that the coup was gathering momentum. “They dropped Will in it,” said one. “It’s embarrassing to be honest.”

But an ally of Braverman said the claim was “completely false” and that Number 10 had itself leaked the story.

Who’s telling the truth? Conservative MPs should hope that the answer is “Braverman’s ally”. Step one in the “how to see off a coup against the prime minister” playbook is to get your enemies’ names in the press in order to make the plot against you look weak, poorly planned and doomed from the start.

So far, the only named individuals who have come out against Sunak are David Frost and Simon Clarke, both constant critics of the prime minister, and Dry, a former special adviser, who, to be blunt, hardly anyone outside Westminster had heard of until this week. This makes the plot against Sunak look trivial. If the prime minister’s own team was behind the newspaper revelations about Dry, it’s a sign that there is life and strength in the Downing Street operation.

While the anti-Sunak plotters would have to be very inept indeed to have put Dry’s name out there, their campaign is serious in that it is organised and well-funded. The poll intended to spook Tory MPs into dumping Sunak is estimated by industry experts to have cost up to £40,000, supplied by anonymous Tory donors. It has the willing support of influential parts of the Conservative-friendly media, with the Telegraph willing to air the plot’s demands at length. But it is also silly (in that it has been poorly run and prone to acts of self-sabotage).

Given that to displace Sunak the plotters need to mobilise at least some MPs from the party’s left and centre, and at least some pro-Remain MPs, it was not a good idea for the faces of the anti-Sunak attack to be Frost and Clarke. Neither of them are well-placed to appeal to those MPs.

So we have to accept that it is certainly possible that the plotters, rather than Downing Street, are the reason why Dry’s name was revealed in the papers.

But however silly the plot against Sunak is, because it enjoys support from the right-wing press and has serious money behind it, we certainly haven’t heard the last of it just yet.

Now try this

I had a lovely Burns Night meal (both in terms of the food and, most importantly, the company) at Noble Rot yesterday, of haggis, neeps and tatties.

As luck would have it, Noble Rot is one of the restaurants laying on a lunch in aid of our financial literacy charity, Flic. You have until 8pm GMT on January 28 to bid for lunch there with our financial regulation editor Laura Noonan, with me at Turnips, or with a host of other FT journalists at various lovely places.

However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend.

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