Meetings at 5.40am, blasting out Elvis in the corridors of power and handing awards to staffers with the best ideas: ANDREW PIERCE on Rishi Sunak's final days in Downing Street... and the REAL reason he went for that catastrophic early election

By Andrew Pierce 21:08 05 Jul 2024, updated 09:45 06 Jul 2024

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Twice a day the unmistakable voice of Elvis Presley echoed around the open plan office at Tory campaign headquarters.

For three minutes mid-morning and again in the late afternoon, 150 staff stopped to listen to the recording of A Little Less Conversation.

Music possesses a unique power to inspire, motivate and energise a campaign according to political strategists. The campaign team chose the Elvis number from a shortlist drawn up by senior staff.

While some party apparatchiks saw it as absurd, one ultra-loyal aide said: 'Most of us looked forward to hearing it. The song fired us up in the face of a never-ending sea of bad news from the pollsters.'

This is the story of the last few days in the bunker of a disastrous Tory campaign as it lurched from one crisis to another – from Sunak's catastrophic decision to prematurely leave the D-Day commemorations, a decision approved by some of his most senior advisers in campaign HQ, to his fateful dithering in suspending two candidates caught up in the election betting scandal.

Most of the advisers were as aghast as Tory MPs and ministers at Rishi Sunak's decision to go for a July 4 election. 

When he told the Cabinet at its 4pm meeting on May 22, it was already a fait accompli.

'There was no point in arguing as he'd already told the King,' said one minister who listened in disbelief as Sunak revealed his big idea. 

'If the deal hadn't been done with the King there could have been a leadership contest. It's why Sunak tied our hands.'

After the early election call, Sunak's 50-strong Downing Street advisory team moved into two floors of the party HQ in Matthew Parker Street, a stone's throw from Parliament.

One objective of the early poll was to catch Reform UK unawares, which backfired spectacularly after Nigel Farage entered the race.

The decision to go to the people also had a hugely disruptive impact on the once-fabled Tory party election machine.

Richard Holden, Conservative chairman and one of the party's more effective media performers, was still desperately searching for a new constituency to fight as his own seat in Durham had been carved up in boundary changes.

To the fury of local party members he was parachuted into the new seat of Basildon and Billericay, then spent the entire campaign in the constituency and almost never on the airwaves or at campaign HQ.

As one seasoned official told me: 'It's the first campaign I've worked on which was a Tory chairman-free zone. His absence was another sign of how shockingly ill-prepared we were.'

The timing of the election will feature prominently in Sunak's political epitaph for it is hard to find a minister or party worker who agreed with it. 

The vast majority wanted to wait until interest rates started falling and the positive impact of the two cuts in national insurance fed through to voters.

But I can now disclose just why Sunak pushed for an early poll. It was because Oliver Dowden, who was deputy prime minister and Sunak's closest political friend, had discovered that every month fixed term mortgage rates were ending for 135,000 homeowners.

Their average 2.7 per cent deals were being replaced by new packages closer to 6 per cent – adding hundreds and in some cases thousands of pounds to people's monthly outgoings.

'We walked through all the scenarios with the PM but this number was crucial to the decision,' insists my source.

'Oliver was obsessed by it. He flapped, as usual, as he feared that by November another 800,000 homeowners would have mortgages which had doubled in cost.

'These were our core supporters and we could not rely on the Bank of England to cut interest rates. We were also worried about more boats crossing the Channel.

'What if legal challenges grounded the planes to Rwanda yet again? So there was compelling logic for a July election.'

With the polls stubbornly refusing to move, some supporters gave up paid employment to volunteer to work on the campaign on social media and telephone canvassing.

Each day began with a strategy meeting at 5.40am led by Isaac Levido, the Australian-born campaign director who was Boris Johnson's election chief when he won his 80-seat majority in 2019.

Levido was in the centre of a hub of eight desks on the ground floor. He was flanked by Liam Booth-Smith, 37, Sunak's chief of staff who he's worked with for the last six years. Booth-Smith was given an unexpected peerage in Sunak's dissolution honours list.

The inner circle also included Alex Wild, the director of communications for the Tories, Nerissa Chesterfield, the No 10 director of communications, Cass Horowitz the son of Foyle's War creator Anthony Horowitz, who was the social media guru, and Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, who was chief executive of the trade body UK Music before he joined Sunak as No 10 director of strategy.

They also included James Forsyth, Sunak's political secretary, a friend from Winchester College who was best man at his wedding. Forsyth backed an early election – unlike Levido who argued vociferously against it.

Sunak often joined Tory campaign meetings on Zoom, along with Dowden, whose knighthood in Sunak's dissolution honours list will astonish and anger Tories who lost their seats.

Occasionally Sunak would appear in the bunker to attend strategy meetings or, bizarrely, hand out awards made at the close of play each day to the staff judged to have worked the hardest or come up with the best ideas.

The prizes were furry koalas, kangaroos, or emus in a nod to Levido's birth place. Sometimes they were given brass lapel badges inscribed with the words: Well done! GE2024. Many Tories who have lost their seats in the party's worst result in modern history are utterly contemptuous of the awards.

'Pitiful, pathetic, and childish,' said one minister who is now jobless. 'They should have been giving out booby prizes for a dud campaign not rewarding the people who ran it.'

But one adviser insisted it raised morale. 'It may sound silly but the awards helped keep spirits up and promoted healthy, friendly competition. I for one will treasure my koala bear.'

Rewards aside, the mood remained sombre as policy initiatives such as national service for 18-year-olds failed to shift polls. 'People had stopped listening to us,' added the source. 'They stopped listening months ago.'

Initially Team Sunak convinced itself the early campaign was working. But all that changed on June 3 when Nigel Farage held a press conference at London's Glaziers Hall.

In Tory HQ you could have heard a pin drop as Farage walked to the podium. Dozens crowded round banks of TVs. When he announced he was not only running for Parliament but had taken over the leadership there were audible groans. Some people cried.

Reform's ratings soared and from that point, the Tory HQ was no longer fighting for an unlikely victory but to minimise the scale of the defeat at the hands of the Reform wreckers.

Ironically, when the exit poll was published at 10pm on Thursday there were few groans or moans. 

'It was the best poll rating we had for six weeks suggesting 135 seats,' said the source. When Liz Truss lost her seat there were even one or two muffled cheers.

As the inquest gets under way into the devastating scale of the defeat, Levido, who directed the campaign, will return to his lobbying company.

Did he have a premonition? In the last few months he's been hiring staff with impeccable Labour connections who will be able to work with the newly installed Starmer administration.