“There have been so many turnovers of leadership, and so many kind of assassinations that everyone is complicit,” former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne said on his podcast earlier this month.
“If you were a Boris Johnson supporter, you’d say Sunak is an assassin, Sunak led a coup. Or if you were Simon Clarke, you’d say Sunak was unhelpful in the bringing down of Liz Truss,” Osborne added, referencing Truss ally Clarke’s recent call for Sunak to go for the good of the party.
“There’s been years now of this, so it’s very hard for the leadership to call for unity when they themselves became the leaders on the back of a coup,” Osborne observed.
The Plot
Some of the prime minister’s most staunch opponents certainly feel motivated by what they see as his deeply disloyal resignation as Johnson’s chief finance minister back in 2022. It helped set the herd in motion with a mass ministerial walk-out that ended Johnson’s time at the top.
“I will never forgive [Sunak] for basically putting personal ambition before country,” said one Johnson loyalist, who claims not to be part of the current group of plotters, but does want Sunak ousted.
“Boris wanted to get on with the agenda, with the 2019 manifesto, and deliver it for the people — but he was surrounded by people who are only interested in power, and Sunak had his own ideas,” they added.
