What obstacles will Rishi Sunak have to overcome in the New Year?

Although Rishi Sunak narrowly avoided defeat over his Rwanda bill, Westminster is awash with speculation that it might not be such a happy new year for the prime minister.

Dozens of MPs abstained on the vote over the emergency legislation, which passed at second reading by 313 votes to 269 and was introduced after the Supreme Court ruled that the Rwanda deportation policy was unlawful. Despite days of turmoil and alleged scheming, no Conservative MP voted against the bill. 

Yet it was "a day of high drama in Westminster that laid bare the scale of division in the Conservative Party", said the Financial Times. The vote is "a portent of the trouble looming for Downing Street". 

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What the papers said

Sunak said the victory would allow him to deliver his pledge of "stopping the boats", but leaders of five right-wing factions within the Tory party, dubbed the "five families", warned that they would try to vote down the bill "unless it was significantly hardened up in the coming weeks", said The Telegraph. The number of Tory abstentions – 29, according to Telegraph analysis – could be "enough rebels to force a future defeat". 

The embattled prime minister may have avoided a leadership challenge for now, but he is more unpopular than ever, according to YouGov polling carried out just before the Rwanda vote. About 70% of people said they had an unfavourable opinion of Sunak, with his net favourability dropping 10 points since November. It makes him "as unpopular as Boris Johnson was when he resigned as prime minister", noted The Times. 

Sunak's victory "came at no little cost to his authority", said the FT. And he "faces another showdown in the new year", added The Times's senior political correspondent Geraldine Scott. Right-wing MPs said they would vote down the plan "if it was not toughened up", while moderates said they would "pull their support if Sunak went any further towards breaching international law".

There are also threats outside of the Westminster jungle. After arriving back in Britain following his appearance on "I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!", Nigel Farage claimed the government was heading for "catastrophic defeat". The former UKIP leader said the Tories "had no idea what was coming down the track towards them". 

He previously told GB News that the next election would be "utterly and completely dominated by the immigration issue". Support for the right-wing and anti-immigration Reform UK party, which Farage led in its previous iteration as the Brexit Party, is climbing in the polls. Farage could be "plotting a comeback" to front-line politics in January, reported The Sun. 

But the main obstacle for the prime minister might well be himself. Some fear Sunak "might not have the temperament to charm the electorate", said Politico, particularly over "a gruelling six-week general election campaign". 

His decision to "abruptly" cancel a meeting with his Greek counterpart over the disputed Elgin Marbles "reignited Tory fears about a petulant streak which surfaces in the heat of political battle", the news site continued. For a British prime minister to do so to a visiting European ally was "almost unheard of".

When he was chancellor, the public found Sunak "authoritative and reassuring", Luke Tryl, director of the consultancy More in Common, told Politico. Now, "they tend to find him lecturing and sometimes snappy". 

This became clear during last year's Conservative leadership debates, said Tryl. The public found his attitude to Liz Truss "rude and condescending" – perhaps explaining her victory.

What next?

More high drama is likely to be in store when MPs return from their Christmas break. 

The Rwanda bill still has to get through the Commons, where MPs will debate amendments, and then the House of Lords. 

A member of the One Nation group told The Times that its members were "already looking at ways to bring forward a wrecking amendment that could get Labour's support and kill off the bill". 

However, Home Secretary James Cleverly told LBC that there was "very little wiggle room" to change the bill. He insisted that he would "see off" attempts to kill off the legislation. "We will always defend ourselves against attempts to break this bill," Cleverly told The Times.

As for Sunak, senior Tory MPs are warning that it could kill off any hopes he had of avoiding a Labour landslide at the next election. "If this circus continues, with my unimportant colleagues fronting up to the cameras, taking lumps out of colleagues, we will go down the tubes together," MP Gary Streeter told the FT's George Parker, warning that the party faced a "1997-scale defeat".