Are UK’s Tories sleepwalking into Umno mode?

 

Ibrahim M Ahmad

With question marks over who would succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister finally resolved, Conservative Party watchers are now waiting to see if the party can get its act together in time for the next general election in the UK.

Scheduled to be called no later than Jan 23, 2025, newly installed party president Liz Truss hinted that she may make her country go to the polls early, promising to “deliver a great victory for the Conservative party in 2024”.

With her party trailing Labour by 15 points according to a YouGov poll released last month, keeping that promise was already going to be a mammoth task.

Internal bickerings that linger following a bruising battle for the party’s top post with early frontrunner Rishi Sunak will make the new party chief’s job much harder.

Truss has already snubbed the first opportunity to work towards a reconciliation by purging Sunak allies and installing her loyalists in key Cabinet posts – best friend Therese Coffey as deputy prime minister and health secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor, James Cleverly as foreign secretary, and Suella Braverman as home secretary.

Their British stiff upper lips will never admit it, but it surely seems like the Conservative party is sleepwalking into Umno mode.

And what a role model Umno is for them. In fact, the Malay drama unfolding would make a far more compelling mini-series.

Originally breaking out into the open in June when president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi removed Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s ally Tajuddin Abdul Rahman from the party’s Supreme Council, civil war between the two party leaders has continued unabated.

Former president Najib Razak’s incarceration a fortnight ago has taken those hostilities to a different stratosphere.

Choreographed roadshows during which Umno bigwigs called for Ismail to intervene after rainmaker Najib was bundled into prison a fortnight ago have fallen on deaf ears. Heckles and calls for parliament to be dissolved have followed Ismail ever since.

Meanwhile, gossip mongers among the president’s loyalists are suggesting (without proof) that Ismail was behind a controversial letter from the prosecutor to the court calling for Zahid’s own corruption trial to be expedited to hasten his elimination from the political landscape.

Others are saying that the earlier-than-usual tabling of Budget 2023 may be nothing but a smokescreen, and that the prime minister’s strategy remains to delay elections for as long as he can. Ismail still has a whole year left on his term of office.

Zahid on his own cannot trigger the calling of the general election. That is Ismail’s sole prerogative as prime minister.

What the president can do is compel Umno MPs to withdraw their support for Ismail in the hope that he will lose the majority he commands on the floor of the Dewan Rakyat.

It is a tactic which has been well used in the UK recently. Both Boris Johnson and his predecessor Theresa May were brought down by machinations within their own party.

Yet, Zahid does not command the support of all Umno MPs. Like the Tories, the party is split down the middle between Ismail and him.

Voting among the Tories eventually showed that Truss had a 14% majority over Sunak.

In Umno’s case, how the numbers stack up is anybody’s guess. Neither Zahid nor Ismail dares to risk knowing how an Umno leadership vote will turn out. Surely that is why party polls were pushed to after the 15th general election (GE15).

Conspiracy theorists have come up with all sorts of permutations suggesting that Ismail will retain office even without Zahid’s support.

They claim that even if some in Umno withdraw their support for him, the prime minister can bank on newfound allies across the political divide, especially among Loke Siew Fook and his DAP colleagues.

That unlikely alliance stems from a memorandum of understanding signed one year ago and the passing of legislation to curb party-hopping and contain political financing activities, both championed by DAP after the dreadful Sheraton Move saw Pakatan Harapan driven out of Putrajaya by Muhyddin Yassin’s short-lived backdoor government.

With Umno holding only 38 out of 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat presently, and given its current state of disarray, the party’s bold claim of a dramatic return to power seems to be nothing more than a pipe dream.

How much additional damage Najib’s and Zahid’s court cases will inflict on the party remains to be seen.

If nothing in the present dynamic changes, Umno may be careening into oblivion. The Tories may not be too far behind. - FMT

Ibrahim M Ahmad is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.