![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/20\/23\/76820695-0-There_was_certainly_plenty_for_Mr_Sunak_to_ponder_as_he_flew_bac-a-9_1697839852808.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe morning after Tory MPs shunted Boris Johnson out of Downing Street, the Daily Mail’s front-page headline asked: ‘What the hell have they done?’<\/p>\n
Today, that despairing question seems more prescient and relevant than ever.<\/p>\n
Hooked on psychodrama, political pygmies ousted the party’s most magnetic and electable leader since Baroness Thatcher over a series of essentially trivial misdeeds.<\/p>\n
This reckless coup led to the bedlam of the Truss interregnum, more unseemly infighting and, eventually, the disputed coronation of Rishi Sunak. Serving the public came a distant second to self-indulgence.<\/p>\n
While Mr Sunak has undoubtedly steadied the Conservative ship, it remains badly battered. For all Boris’s faults, the party was only ten points behind Labour in the polls when he was dumped. Today, it languishes a depressing 20 adrift.<\/p>\n
As Mr Johnson left office, we warned: ‘We can only pray the price is not a disastrous Starmer-led government in 2024.’<\/p>\n
The shattering loss to Labour of two of the Tories’ supposedly safest seats \u2013 Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire \u2013 brings that ghastly prospect a giant stride closer.<\/p>\n
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While Mr Sunak (pictured in Granada, Spain, on October 5) has undoubtedly steadied the Conservative ship, it remains badly battered\u00a0<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/20\/23\/76818057-0-Newly_elected_Labour_MP_Sarah_Edwards_with_party_leader_Sir_Keir-a-10_1697839861299.jpg\")
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Newly elected Labour MP Sarah Edwards with party leader Sir Keir Starmer at Tamworth Football Club, after winning the Tamworth by-election<\/p>\n
If Thursday’s huge swings were repeated at the election, the Conservatives would not so much be defeated as annihilated.<\/p>\n
Mr Sunak will have been in No10 for a year on Wednesday, and while he’s had some political successes, people are deeply dissatisfied with the Government.<\/p>\n
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Britain groans under the highest taxes since the 1940s. Inflation and interest rates are hurting families and firms. Legal and illegal immigration is sky high. The NHS is creaking, rail workers seem perpetually on strike, crime is rife, a recalcitrant civil service runs rings around ministers and our institutions are blighted by wokery.<\/p>\n
The Tories look exhausted and short of big ideas. But while Labour crows that its by-election triumphs are ‘redrawing the political map’, there is little love for Sir Keir Starmer in the country as a whole.<\/p>\n
Even in his own ranks many think he is an ineffectual dud. After more flip-flops than a gasping codfish, no one really knows what he stands for. Labour has no coherent policy on gender, energy, housing and the rest. Yes, the art of politics is to be flexible \u2013 but Sir Keir has injected that idea with steroids.<\/p>\n
We do know that he remains hopelessly in love with the sclerotic, tired EU. If in power, he would edge us back into its orbit, slamming the brakes on post-Brexit Britain’s exciting engagement with thriving, dynamic parts of the world.<\/p>\n
His party is split, too. Scratch off the veneer of his ‘grown-up politics’ and you still have a rabble of Corbynite cranks, terror sympathisers and union dinosaurs.<\/p>\n
Intriguingly, the Labour majority in both by-elections was smaller than the votes cast for the pro-Brexit Reform Party.<\/p>\n
The Tories should learn the lesson and adopt traditional Right-wing policies, not flutter their eyelashes at the liberal-Left who’d sooner die than vote Conservative.<\/p>\n
Mr Sunak must put more clear blue water between himself and Sir Keir on key issues. Pushing back net-zero bans on gas boilers and petrol cars, and a promise to end the war on motorists, were hugely popular.<\/p>\n
Despite the Left’s rage, the public is also behind the Rwanda scheme as a means of deterring illegal cross-Channel migration.<\/p>\n
Ditching woke policies that many consider dangerous and absurd, such as letting men who identify as women on to female-only hospital wards, would also find favour.<\/p>\n
And, of course, cutting taxes. Instead of milking hard-working, aspirational middle Britain, shouldn’t Mr Sunak start acting as if he’s on their side? Without their support, he can’t hope to hold on to power.<\/p>\n
Time is short and, to quote WH Auden, ‘history to the defeated may say Alas but cannot help or pardon’. Mr Sunak must now show if he is serious about winning.<\/p>\n