Four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two monarchs and one mini-Budget: it’s fair to say 2022 was a crazy year in politics and for the Tories in particular. And at least one Conservative MP has admitted publicly what many of his colleagues are saying privately about their party’s prospects at the next election. Jerome Mayhew, the Tory MP for Broadland, told Radio Norfolk last week that:
I think we deserve a bit of a kicking as a result of what we’ve done as a party this year. We haven’t covered ourselves in glory in Westminster, you’re right, we’re on our third Prime Minister in twelve months. No political party is going to come out of that smelling of roses. But we’ve got to pick ourselves up, which we’ve done, and we’ve got Rishi Sunak now as Prime Minister.
Mayhew of course has some experience of monkeying around, having previously been managing director of the popular Go Ape adventure park. Is there going be less gorilla warfare on the Tory backbenches this year? Or will No.10 be driven bananas by yet more infighting?
One Labour wag quipped to Steerpike: ‘The Tories keep aping Labour policies and Rishi Sunak doesn’t give a monkeys. General election now!’ Mr S looks forward to finding out if the Conservatives are indeed gibbon no quarter, come those local elections in May…
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