Is Rishi Sunak preparing to throw Tory Red Wall MPs overboard?

Can the people around Rishi Sunak really be dim enough not to have anticipated that his reshuffle would go down like a lead balloon among social conservatives? It seems unlikely to me that Sunak’s Downing Street could be peopled by such clowns. Sacking Suella Braverman and bringing back David Cameron into a great office of state was an unmistakeable sign of Sunak’s true political complexion, amounting to two fingers up to the party’s winning 2019 coalition of voters.

So as we move, Sherlock Holmes-like, through the range of explanations, that leaves us having to consider the rather conspiratorial possibility that the Sunakites want to lose. Or if they don’t exactly want to lose, that they have at least reconciled themselves to the inevitability of losing and are now primarily concerned with shaping the nature of that defeat.

Sure, the No.