A well placed source has told Express.co.uk that a request has been made to the Corporation of the City of London to cancel the Lord Mayor’s banquet this year because “there is unlikey to be a Prime Minister that week”.
It is important to say that this has been denied by the Corporation itself but the source is somebody who would know the truth of that matter and would know if even an unofficial request had been made.
It would be the first time the banquet was cancelled in almost 800 years, but if it is true then it points to when the preferred date of the election would be.
The banquet takes place on the first Monday after the Lord Mayor’s show and the main speaker is the Prime Minister. This year it is due to be on November 11 and it would suggest then that an election will take place on Thursday November 14.
However, whether that is Rishi Sunak’s preferred date or not, the issue now guiding the date of the election seems to be more about his survival than anything else.
According to sources, two camps in Downing Street are pushing for different election dates.
There is “the sensible camp” including strategist Isaac Levido who is pushing for an Autumn election possibly in October but more likely that November 14 date.
Their reasoning is that a May election would be “an act of political suicide” and that another fiscal event (Autumn Statement) is needed in early September if the Conservatives have any hope at all, especially after the Budget fell completely flat last week.
Then there is the so-called “kamikaze group”. They are pushing for the Prime Minister to press the button at the end of this month and go for a May 2 election. The final date for that to be confirmed is March 27.
This group’s reasoning is that the local elections on May 2 will be so bad that the Prime Minister may get ousted by his MPs or be in a completely unrecoverable position. The theory is that he may as well go on May 2 to avoid that humiliation, as a sort of act of survival giving him the chance to go out on his own terms.
According to one senior source: “The balance of power ebbs from day-to-day between the two groups. But it seems that the May election group has the upper at the moment.”
There is a more serious aspect though, as another source noted: “It is hard to see the PM holding things together long enough to go to the country in the Autumn. People in the Downing Street bunker are literally giving up. If Tory MPs actually got their act together to put letters in the PM would probably just resign instead of fighting it.”
Another senior Tory MP added: “We are just limping along like a wounded animal. There is no purpose to this Government.”
There is a theory though that the idea of a May election is being floated to avoid more defections to Reform UK or to scare MPs from putting letters in asking for a confidence vote in their leader.
But whatever is going on with the different factions there is a morbid mood developing among MPs with an impending sense of doom about their prospects.
One likened it to the orders given to the foot soldiers on the first day of the Somme before they were sent over the top to get slaughtered.
The senior MP said: “We keep on being told we need to stick to the plan – just like the soldiers were told to stick to the plan on the first day of the Somme. We all know what happened to them!”
