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Rory Stewart, the former cabinet minister who ran for the leadership of Britain’s Conservative party in 2019, has declared he would be interested in serving in a Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer.
Stewart’s comments are unhelpful for Rishi Sunak, whose Conservatives end 2023 divided over migration policy and trailing Labour by 20 points in the polls.
The prime minister has been trying to hold his party together and focus on what he hopes will be a political rebound in 2024, but some Tories are countenancing life after a Labour election victory.
Starmer has been trying to woo former Conservatives in recent months, including by praising Margaret Thatcher for “setting loose Britain’s natural entrepreneurialism”.
Stewart suggested he was impressed by Starmer when he was asked at a live podcast show at the Albert Hall on Thursday night if he would consider taking a ministerial role in a Labour government. “Yes,” he replied.
Alastair Campbell, Stewart’s co-presenter on the “Rest is Politics” podcast, said: “It was interesting that one of the loudest cheers of the night came when he said he would happily be a Labour minister in the Lords.”
Stewart told the Financial Times: “I’d always be tempted to go back into government, but not sure I’d really do it. I would honestly have to see what kind of government it was. But yes, I am definitely jealous of friends who are ministers.”
Stewart, a former foreign and international aid minister, stood unsuccessfully against Boris Johnson for the Tory leadership in 2019. Later that year he was stripped of the party whip for trying to block a “no deal” Brexit.
To serve under Labour, Stewart would first have to be given a seat in the upper house, but the popularity of his podcast with Campbell — their live show at the Albert Hall quickly sold out — suggests he might be a tempting target for Starmer.
A Tory official was dismissive, describing Stewart’s 2019 leadership bid as “a patchwork of woolly ideas totally devoid of detail which is exactly what the modern Labour party is offering, alongside tax increases and further borrowing”.
Meanwhile, Sunak ends the year with his personal popularity falling to new lows and trying to hold together two warring wings of his party, often failing to satisfy neither.
His legislation to revive his Rwanda migration policy, which passed its first Commons vote this week with a majority of 44, has been criticised by moderate One Nation Tory MPs for being too tough.
But his party’s rightwingers believe it does not go far enough. Some want Britain to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights and are pushing Sunak to go further in the new year when the Safety of Rwanda bill returns to the Commons.
One former Tory minister said some rightwing Conservative MPs were preparing for a fight to control the party after “what they think will be an inevitable defeat at the next election”, adding: “They are scrapping over the bones of the party.”
Sunak will on Saturday travel to Rome to attend a political festival organised by Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy party, but some of his own MPs believe he is not rightwing enough. Last year former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg called Sunak “a socialist”.
However, the prime minister believes he can still turn things around next year, including by pushing his Rwanda bill through parliament and — he hopes — getting some migrants on a plane to Kigali in the spring.
A tax-cutting Budget is planned in March and Sunak’s supporters say the effects of lower inflation and falling taxes will start to feed through to household budgets. The preference in senior Tory circles is for an autumn 2024 election.
The potential pitfalls are clear, including continuing Tory ill-discipline. The party HQ is also braced for two by-elections early next year — in Blackpool South and Wellingborough — arising from allegations of misconduct against sitting MPs.
Concerns are rising in Tory circles over the rightwing party Reform UK making strides in Wellingborough, where Ukip came second with almost 20 per cent of the vote in 2015.
The incumbent Tory MP, Peter Bone, is facing a six-week suspension from the Commons for bullying and indecent exposure and the results of a recall petition are expected next week. Bone denies the findings by parliament’s watchdog.
Nevertheless, Sunak was said to have been in “chipper” mood this week when he hosted Christmas drinks for his MPs, even posing for a photograph between rightwing MP Jonathan Gullis and left-leaning Sir Bob Neill, two of the protagonists in the Rwanda row.
Some Tory strategists insist a “hung parliament is really underpriced” in the election and Sunak could hold on to power even if the Tories fall short of a majority. Few senior Conservatives now believe the prime minister can win outright.
Starmer, meanwhile, hosted drinks this week for lobby journalists and in a sign of the party’s increasing proximity to power so many reporters attended that some drinks rapidly ran out.
One Starmer aide said: “We genuinely thought the poll lead would have narrowed by now. It’s astonishing how little traction Sunak is getting. We’re having to remind people all the time not to start measuring the curtains.”
The Labour leader claimed that even the Tory press was warming to him. “In 2017 the Daily Mail described me as ‘weak and floundering’,” he said. “This year there was a notable thawing when they described me as merely ‘floundering’.”
Starmer’s office was approached for comment.
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