Rishi Sunak is facing his final pre-election test

The Prime Minister is looking to clear his last hurdle ahead of a general election, writes Paul Montague-Smith, as the Tories hover their fingers over the ‘self-destruct’ button of new leadership.

Rishi Sunak will be mightily relieved that the legislation implementing his Rwanda deportation scheme is finally on the statute book.

The Home Office is set to start detaining people for the first flights expected in July. Ireland is saying that it has seen an increase in illegal migrants from our country and wants a deal to return them to the UK. The Government is saying no, not until France and the wider EU agrees the same.

Meanwhile, for the time being, the small boats keep on coming. Only time will tell whether the prospect of deportation to Rwanda will have the chilling effect hoped for by the Government.

Last week was, though, a good one as far as the Prime Minister will be concerned, only spoiled by the defection of a Conservative MP to Labour. Dr Dan Poulter is standing down as an MP anyway, but his choosing to ‘cross the floor’ and make a point in doing so, criticising the Government’s stewardship of the NHS, is a very welcome gift to Labour, and may well be a sign of what’s to come.

This week may well determine whether the Conservative party panics and tries to defenestrate yet another leader. The local elections taking place this week is the final significant test of public opinion before the general election. 107 councils across England and Wales are holding elections for just fewer than 2,700 seats, but there are also 10 mayoral contests, 37 police and crime commissioners, and the whole of the London Assembly up for grabs.

If the results are as bad for the Conservatives as Tory MPs fear and they see their own Armageddon on the horizon, they may decide to press the self-destruct button and force a leadership vote, however stupid that would be politically. Just over 50 MPs would need to lose their heads and send a letter of no confidence to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee to trigger a vote.

The Prime Minister will be hoping that with the Rwanda legislation passed, the recent commitment to increase defence spending, a new focus on benefit reform and the chance of further tax cuts before the election, sense will prevail and his critics, particularly on the right of his party, will hold their nerve.

Meanwhile how lucky can one guy be? Keir Starmer continues to ride a wave of good fortune. As well as winning back seats in the ‘Red Wall’, key to getting a parliamentary majority is winning seats from the SNP in Scotland.

Fortuitously, like the Conservatives, the SNP has been busy self-destructing. The financial scandal surrounding the party had already impacted its polling, bringing it down from around a ten point lead a year ago to around 33% recently, neck and neck with Labour.

But with the collapse of the coalition agreement between the SNP and Greens and the resignation of First Minister Humza Yousaf, Labour has a prime opportunity to take advantage of the political instability that will now follow.

Even the police investigation into his Deputy, Angela Rayner, may prove to be fortuitous for the Labour leader. Ms Rayner was elected deputy leader at the same time as Sir Keir’s election as leader.

She has been important in maintaining unity between the left and the right of the party but, should she have to resign – as she has said she will if found to have done anything wrong in terms of her housing arrangements – it would provide Sir Keir with an opportunity to get someone of his own preference in place, subject of course to the votes of Labour party members.

The party’s membership profile is, though, thought to have changed significantly in recent years, with a large drop in members, probably reflecting the departure of those from the hard left of politics who joined to support Jeremy Corbyn.

With probably only six months until the formal election campaign starts, it’s difficult to see how Keir Starmer could be in a better position. But then as recent years have shown, six months is a very, very long time in politics.