Good morning. According to the main political write-through in the Sunday Times yesterday, Rishi Sunak feels life isn’t treating him fairly. Tim Shipman and Tom Calver wrote:
At Winchester, Oxford, Stanford, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, Sunak was told that if he worked hard and solved problems, he would succeed in life. But political reward is more hard won. One cabinet minister put it this way: “In his mind the deal he struck with the universe is not working out. He’s very clever, but he knows that with cleverness comes responsibility to graft … But if you work hard and do the right thing, the universe will reward you — and in his mind at the moment the universe is not keeping its side of the bargain.”
Shipman and Calver aren’t saying that Sunak himself has been moaning about cosmic forces conspiring against him; they are just quoting someone trying to sum up his state of mind. But if Sunak does privately believe that the universe has lined up with Boris Johnson in a conspiracy to do him in, then he will find two pieces of fresh evidence for that in the news this morning, both relating to immigration.
First, a group called the New Conservatives, around 25 ‘red wall’ Tory MPs are publishing plans designed to get net migration down to below 226,000 by the time of the next election. As Rajeev Syal reports, their ideas go beyond what the government is already doing. And their headline goal, which revives the promise in the Conservatives’s 2019 manifesto, serves as a rebuke to Sunak, because it highlights his recent decision to in effect abandon that target (or redefine it, to be more precise, but in practice that amounts to the same thing).
Second, the ConservativeHome website this morning has published a survey of Tory members suggesting that more than two thirds of them want the UK to leave the European convention on human rights. ConHome surveys are seen as a reliable guide to opinion in the party, and this creates another headache for Sunak. He has not ruled out leaving the convention. But unlike Suella Braverman, the home secretary, he has no enthusiasm for the proposition which, were it to be tried, might well split his party, and torpedo the UK’s reputation internationally.
In his write-up of the survey, Paul Goodman, the ConservativeHome editor, thinks Sunak may be forced into promising a “changed relationship” with the European court of human rights in the next Tory manifesto. He says:
I’ve suspected for some time that Rishi Sunak may be propelled into promising a changed relationship with the Court during the run-up to the next election.
But even if he doesn’t, the scale of refugee movement in a globalised world, let alone that of illegal immigration, is likely to move European centre-right parties in that direction during the years and decades ahead.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: The high court resumes hearing the government’s legal challenge against the Covid inquiry’s demand to see unredacted WhatsApp messages from ministers.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, holds a phone-in on LBC.
After 1pm (UK time): James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, addresses a meeting of the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly in Brussels.
2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3pm: Peers resume their report stage debate on the illegal migration bill.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate the economic activity of public bodies (overseas matters) bill, which is intended to stop councils implementing boycotts of Israel.
4pm: Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, gives evidence the Commons public accounts committee.
And at some point today the Cabinet Office will publish a written ministerial statement about Sue Gray with the title “Prima facie breach of the civil service code by the former second permanent secretary for the union and the constitution”.
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