Before they were bussed off to Windsor last Thursday for a fun-filled awayday on how to approach the next general election, many Conservative MPs believed a corner might just have been turned in their party’s fortunes.
Rishi Sunak appeared to have pulled off a remarkable success with his deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. The newspapers had been full of stories suggesting the prime minister might be about to betray the Brexiters and sell out the Democratic Unionist party (DUP). And they were raising questions about how Boris Johnson, still furious over Sunak’s role in ousting him from