Rishi Sunak will face a challenge to his leadership if the Conservatives suffer heavy losses and lose high-profile mayors in Thursday’s local elections, rightwing Tory rebels have claimed.

Most Conservative MPs believe the prime minister would survive even a terrible set of results on May 2 because there is no viable alternative and a general election is around the corner.

“There will just be sullen grumpiness all round,” said one former cabinet minister.

James Cleverly, home secretary, warned the Tory rebels last Thursday that trying to remove Sunak would be a “catastrophic idea” and compared a putative putsch with jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

But a group of Conservative MPs and ex-officials, including diehard supporters of ex-premiers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, say they will launch one final bid to try to topple Sunak.

Speaking anonymously, the Tory rebels told the Financial Times that a plan has been drawn up to destabilise or oust Sunak once the results of the local elections in England and Wales have been announced.

On Sunday, the rebels threw down the gauntlet to Sunak with a five-point policy plan, setting out proposals to end junior doctors’ strikes with a more generous pay offer, introduce tougher migration measures, increase defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027, toughen sentences for prolific offenders, and cut the welfare bill.

The plotters set out the 100-day plan as a blueprint of “quick wins” that could be adopted by Sunak’s successor if the rebels manage to successfully topple him.

The threat of a coup attempt has created a febrile atmosphere at Westminster with speculation that Sunak could soon name the date for a general election to head off the danger.

Plotters claim there is a whipping operation to try to muster the 52 letters that must be sent by Tory MPs to Conservative grandees in order to trigger a no-confidence vote in Sunak.

“The polls and focus groups that have gone round show that nothing Rishi does matters,” said one Conservative rebel. “It’s not the policy, it’s the messenger. People just don’t like the guy.”

Sunak repeatedly declined to rule out a July election in an interview with Sky on Sunday. “I’m not going to do that,” he said.

In comments referring to his previous remark that an election in the second half of 2024 was his “working assumption”, he added: “[It’s] the same thing I’ve said all year.”

A Downing Street insider insisted Sunak was still “planning for an autumn election”, dismissing rumours of an early poll as “complete nonsense” being spread by Labour party mischief-makers.

A rightwing Tory MP, who denied being part of any plot, predicted that some in the party would move against Sunak after the local elections and would rally around any alternative would-be leader capable of “stemming the bloodshed”.

“Over the Easter recess, colleagues spent more time on the ground in their seats and got a better sense of how bad things are,” said the MP.

On Saturday, Dan Poulter, the Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and a former minister, defected to Labour.

Many Conservative MPs refer to talk of a possible coup as “mad”, but they accept that Sunak could face fresh Conservative infighting after the local elections.

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, local elections experts at Plymouth University, have predicted the Tories could lose 500 of the roughly 900 council seats they are defending, which would be a serious setback.

Sunak’s allies are particularly focused on whether the party can win any of the high-profile mayoralties up for grabs – notably London, the West Midlands and Tees Valley.

Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, is expected to win a third term. But Andy Street, Tory mayor of West Midlands, and Lord Ben Houchen, Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, are in hard-fought battles with Labour.

Tory grandees believe Street and Houchen can prove that Tories can still win — in spite of the party trailing Labour by about 20 percentage points or more in national opinion polls — and that will buy Sunak some breathing space.

The prime minister’s team is doing its best to keep potentially mutinous MPs away from Westminster, where plotting is often rife in the Gothic palace’s corridors and bars.

A May bank holiday recess begins on May 2, with the House of Commons not resuming until May 7. Even after that, MPs expect only “light whipping” for the rest of the week, meaning that some will stay away.

The idea of Tory MPs replacing Sunak with a fourth leader in a single parliament, following Johnson and Truss – and just months before an election – is seen by most Conservative MPs as unconscionable.

The absence of a viable alternative to Sunak is a problem facing the rebels, even if some posit Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, as a compromise candidate.

Mordaunt, who faces a struggle to hold on to her Portsmouth North seat at the election, insists her name is often mentioned by people who want to damage her. “The public are so tired of this,” she has told friends.

Sunak’s allies insist the prime minister’s success in finally securing royal assent for his Rwanda asylum bill, which underpins the government’s strategy to curb illegal migration, and his promise to boost defence spending, has shown he is on the front foot and up for the fight.

Cleverly warned Tory rebels not to “feed the psychodrama”. He told a Westminster press lunch: “We should have the discipline to stay focused on what we’ve achieved in government and what we’re planning to do next.”

One former minister loyal to Sunak said: “There’s no sense that there are anywhere near enough mad MPs to attempt to send the Tory party into the guaranteed death spiral that a sword-wielding leadership upheaval would bring.”

Join Lucy Fisher, George Parker and colleagues for an FT subscriber webinar on May 8 to examine the national fallout from the local elections. Register now at ft.com/ukwebinar.

The New York area was hit by another earthquake Saturday morning.

At 9:49 a.m., a 2.9 magnitude earthquake rocked the area five miles south of Peapack and Gladstone in Somerset County, about an hour’s drive west of New York City, according to the United States Geological Survey.

This quake is just one of dozens of aftershocks felt by the area since a 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit the region on April 5, reports the Asbury Park Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.

While earthquakes in this area are rare, they aren’t a surprise, experts say.

“Earthquakes in this region are infrequent, but not unexpected,” according to Jessica Thompson Jobe, a researcher in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program. “This is an area of older, generally inactive faults, but they can become reactivated at any time.”

There were no reports of injuries, and the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management said in a tweet there were no reports of damage.

Geologists examine rocks to gather earthquake data in NJ: Video

Geologists examine old rocks to gather earthquake data in New Jersey. Scientists look for signs like pre-existing cracks in exposed stone.

Where was the original earthquake?

On April 5, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake was recorded in New Jersey and felt throughout surrounding areas, including New York City. It was one of the strongest in state history.

The earthquake’s epicenter was 45 miles from New York City, where residents reported shaking furniture and floors.

The quake and all the aftershocks were located near the Ramapo Fault, which was formed 400 million years ago. The 185-mile-long fault stretches from New York to Pennsylvania and crosses New Jersey.

The USGS deployed “aftershock kits” in New Jersey after the April 5 earthquake. Since then, the agency recorded over 60 aftershocks.

What is an aftershock?

Aftershocks are small earthquakes that occur in the days, months or years in the general area after an earthquake. Aftershocks can still be damaging or deadly, experts say.

Contributing: Amanda Oglesby, Asbury Park Press

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Turkey is in talks with US energy supermajor ExxonMobil over a multibillion-dollar deal to buy liquefied natural gas as Ankara seeks to curb its dependence on Russian energy. 

The country, which imports nearly all of its natural gas, is seeking to build a “new supply portfolio” that will make it less reliant on any single partner, Turkish energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview with the Financial Times. 

The talks come amid improving relations between Turkey and the US after Ankara dropped its veto on Sweden joining the Nato military alliance and Washington agreed to sell Turkey billions of dollars worth of F-16 fighter jets. They also come as Turkey is seeking to reposition itself as a regional energy hub. 

Turkey would secure up to 2.5mn tonnes of LNG a year through the long-term deal under discussion with Exxon, Bayraktar said, adding that the pact could last for a decade.

Bayraktar said the commercial terms of the Exxon deal were still under discussion, but 2.5mn tonnes of LNG shipped to Turkey would currently cost about $1.1bn, according to pricing assessments by data agency Argus.

The 2.5mn tonnes of LNG under discussion would be enough to cover roughly 7 per cent of Turkey’s natural gas consumption last year, according to FT calculations based on data from the Energy Market Regulatory Authority. Last year, Turkey imported 5mn tonnes of LNG from the US on the “spot” market where energy is bought and sold for imminent delivery, Bayraktar said.

Exxon has ambitious plans to expand its LNG portfolio to 40mn tonnes a year by 2030, about double what it was in 2020.

The company owns a 30 per cent stake in Golden Pass LNG, a new export terminal on the US Gulf coast that it is building with partner QatarEnergy. It has a capacity exceeding 18mn tonnes a year and is due to begin producing LNG in the first half of 2025. Exxon is also pursuing LNG projects in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique. 

Exxon said it had initial discussions with the Turkish government regarding potential LNG opportunities but would not comment on the details of its commercial strategy.

Ankara, which had also enquired with other US natural gas producers about LNG deals, is seeking to “diversify” its natural gas supplies before some of its long-term contracts with Russia expire in 2025 and those with Iran expire the following year, Bayraktar said. 

Turkey relies heavily on natural gas for power generation and industry. Households also benefit from large and costly gas subsidies through state gas company Botaş.

Russia is by far Turkey’s biggest natural gas supplier, accounting for more than 40 per cent of its consumption last year, which mostly arrived by pipelines. Ankara currently has long-term LNG supply deals with Algeria and Oman. 

Turkey has retained strong trade, economic and tourist ties with Russia even after Turkey’s Nato allies shunned Moscow after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Moscow is also Turkey’s top oil supplier and will own and operate the country’s first nuclear power plant, currently under construction, on the Mediterranean coast. Russia, along with South Korea, both have “serious interest” in a similar nuclear project on the Black Sea, Bayraktar said.

Bayraktar defended his country’s relations with Russia, saying that “competitive” energy deals with Russia have helped Turkey to avoid the energy crisis that gripped major European countries after the war began. 

“For security of supply, we need to get gas from somewhere. It could be from Russia, it could be from Azerbaijan, it could be Iran, or LNG options,” Bayraktar said, adding that “we need to look at the competitiveness edge; which gas is cheaper?”

Bayraktar added that Turkey had made a concerted effort to expand its infrastructure for receiving and storing LNG. About 30 per cent of Turkish natural gas imports last year were LNG from 15 per cent in 2014.

Turkey has also been launching its own exploration and production operations, including a large gas site in the Black Sea and oil drilling in the country’s south-east. The country may later this year begin exploring for oil in the Black Sea as well, Bayraktar said. 

While local projects covered only a tiny fraction of Turkey’s energy needs currently, they had the potential to be “quite a game-changer for us,” Bayraktar said.

Additional reporting by Shotaro Tani in London