Sajid Javid has become the latest Conservative MP to signal that they will be standing down at the next election. Announcing the news in a letter to his party chairman posted on social media, the former chancellor said the current boundary review deadline – which has seen MPs asked to signal by 5 December whether they want to stand again – had ‘accelerated’ his decision, which he’d come to ‘after much reflection’.
Javid says it is a decision he has ‘wrestled with for some time’. But the timing of it – with 11 other Tory MPs set to step down at the next election – means that it will inevitably be seen as part of a bigger narrative of Tory decay as the party trails behind Labour in the polls. The Chester by-election result – which saw Labour comfortably hold the seat and increase the majority – is just another reminder of the tricky state the Conservatives are now in.
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