The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture,” she said. The prime minister responded initially by telling MPs he was “humbled”, before defiantly rewriting the ministerial code so that ministers would not always be expected to resign for breaking rules. To the astonishment of many in his own party he also removed a section from the code about the importance of ethics in government.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said last week that in little over a year Sunak had imposed tax rises similar in scale to those introduced over 10 years of Gordon Brown’s chancellorship, leaving the UK with the highest overall tax burden since the 1960s.Sunak’s lifestyle and manner are probably too privileged and his power grabs generally too clumsy for him to become an effective authoritarian populist. His crude pressure on the police to ban the pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day proved spectacularly counter-productive. Yet there is a chance that his expansion of state powers, combined with the typically cynical pre-election Tory tax manoeuvres that began this week, will limit the scale of the coming Conservative defeat, at least. Giving voters a taste, however illusory, of economic liberation while taking away many of the political freedoms of controversial anti-establishment groups such as climate activists is a Tory recipe that has worked many times before. The windfall tax on energy companies has been denounced on the Tory right. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA One explanation for the Tory power grab is pretty straightforward. They see confronting and weakening the whole range of tabloid bogeymen, from “ lefty lawyers” to trade unions, as one of the few remaining ways to get re-elected, now that most of their other policies have so obviously failed. In their desperation, the Conservatives are behaving even more than usually like the reactionary newspapers that sustain them, trying to shout down and delegitimise their enemies while presenting the minority of Britons who are consistently rightwing as “the people”.

The former Tory cabinet minister David Gauke said he felt for MPs who had to defend the prime minister and also make clear to voters what the current Conservative party stood for. “They have a broad coalition of voters to satisfy, a leader who does not have deep beliefs and an exceptional crisis. I completely see why Tory MPs are worried. All they have is cultural wedge issues like [sending asylum seekers to] Rwanda. But that does not amount to a strategy.” At RedMolotov.com we specialise in producing high-quality, ethically-sourced t-shirts. We pride ourselves in using the best materials we can find, which is why our t-shirts will not fall out of shape after a few washes like other cheaper varieties you may find for sale elsewhere. But the money for that has to come from somewhere, and as the government faces growing economic pressure, Conservative MPs from wealthier bits of the south of England increasingly worry that ‘levelling up’ ultimately means taking money from their voters and giving it to voters elsewhere. Has Britain ever had a government with so little support and yet such an appetite for expanding its powers? Less than a quarter of the electorate plans to vote Conservative, according to the polls, making this one of our most unpopular governments ever. Behind this stark figure looms an even deeper dissatisfaction, built up by 13 years of scandals, lethal policy failures, broken promises and out-of-their-depth prime ministers. Whatever the Tories offer between now and the election – probably a repeat of this week’s tax cuts based on dubious public spending forecasts – a decisive majority of voters may have already made up their minds against them. Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, wrote in the Daily Telegraph on Friday: “After years banging on about the case for low taxation – the quaint idea that societies are fairer and stronger when people are allowed to keep more of the money they earn – the Tories have now given up.Boris Johnson ‘got Brexit done’ but in doing so, inherited a broad coalition of voters who are difficult to satisfy. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP All our garments are ethically produced: read our full ethical policy here. Size Guide (N.b. all sizes are approximate) Size Asked after Sunak’s statement what the Tories’ biggest problem was, one minister said: “It is that we don’t have a clear strategy. It is that we are not clear what we are.” Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.