OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
Rishi Sunak Won’t Save Britain
Oct. 25,
2022, 1:00 a.m. ET
By Kimi
Chaddah
Ms. Chaddah
is a journalist who writes about Britain’s politics and culture.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/opinion/rishi-sunak-uk-prime-minister.html
LONDON — In
March, Rishi Sunak was photographed filling up a car at a supermarket gas
station. The purpose, of course, was self-promotion: Mr. Sunak was keen to
advertise his role, as finance minister, in cutting the price of fuel. But the
puff misfired.
The car, a
modest red Kia Rio, wasn’t his (it belonged to a supermarket employee). Inside
the garage, Mr. Sunak further embarrassed himself by showing he had no idea how
to make a contactless payment. As a dramatization of Mr. Sunak’s detachment
from ordinary life, it couldn’t be bettered.
That
detachment will now be put to the test. After securing the backing of his
party, Mr. Sunak is set to be Britain’s prime minister. On the surface, he has
a lot going for him: Liz Truss’s disastrous 44-day premiership proved his
warnings about economic “fairy tales” to be remarkably prescient; he commands
the support of a majority of the faction-ridden Conservative parliamentary
party; and his ascent — on the back of his grasp of economics — has calmed the
financial markets.
Yet for all
Mr. Sunak’s appearance of calm and competence, he remains deeply out of touch
with the country he will soon run. That country, economically stagnant,
regionally unbalanced, socially strafed, is in dire need of compassionate
leadership. In Mr. Sunak, by conviction a devotee of small-state Thatcherism
and with no visible concern for the lives of the majority, Britain is unlikely
to get it.
Supporters
of Mr. Sunak point to the success of the furlough policy in March 2020, in
which the government covered up to 80 percent of an employee’s wage during the
pandemic. Yet his eagerness to end it — and its glaring holes, such as the
exclusion of three million self-employed workers — undercut the apparent generosity.
Within two
months, Mr. Sunak outlined plans for its gradual withdrawal and, later in the
year, delayed extending the policy to the point where many workers had already
been lost their job. He was keen to ax a small pandemic-cushioning increase in
the country’s welfare payment, amounting to the largest overnight cut to the
welfare state in British history, and chafed throughout at the scale of state
support. In private, he complained that there was no “magic money tree.”
He
approached the cost-of-living crisis with the same miserly air. In March, Mr.
Sunak promised to provide billions of pounds of financial support to families
throughout the crisis and bring benefits in line with inflation. But these
measures, seemingly substantial, were in practice piecemeal.
Mr. Sunak
was widely criticized — including within his own party — for not doing enough
to protect the country’s poorest; it was estimated that in the absence of
greater support, 1.3 million people would fall into absolute poverty. His scant
plans for the worse off were deemed in The Times of London to be “insufficient,
inefficient and unconservative.” The criticism was a fitting capstone for his
tenure, defined by a selective and shallow concern for others.
It’s a bad
time for the country to be in dispassionate hands. Inflation stands at over 10
percent. Living standards have eroded, with Britons set to see the biggest drop
in disposable income since records began. For the first time, demand for food
banks is said to be outstripping supply. Energy blackouts could be coming in
January. In April, after further increase in bills, the number of people in
fuel poverty could reach 10.7 million. Ambulance delays are now a palpable
“threat to life.” The economy is anemic, set to have the highest inflation and
lowest growth rate of Group of 7 nations next year.
These ills
are results of deep, systemic problems, to be sure. But Mr. Sunak is complicit
in them all. At no point did he show any meaningful interest in addressing,
challenging or rectifying these issues. His attitude toward regional
inequality, among the worst of any comparable developed country’s, is
instructive: In office, he boasted about rigging Treasury formulas to shift
resources from “deprived urban areas” into wealthier constituencies, regardless
of need. His pledge to fix the economy, burdened by a 40 billion pound black
hole in the public finances and facing parlous global economic conditions,
rings hollow.
After 12
years in power, the Conservative Party is almost out of ideas. One that endures
— to balance the books by cutting social spending, shifting the burden onto the
backs of ordinary people rather than the wealthy — is something that Mr. Sunak
is likely to willingly advocate. After all, he is wedded to Thatcherite notions
of a small state, individualism and constrained public spending. This
propensity is no secret. During the leadership election in the summer won by
Ms. Truss, Mr. Sunak wrote in The Telegraph, “I am a Thatcherite, I am running
as a Thatcherite and I will govern as a Thatcherite.”
It’s
impossible, of course, to know exactly what Mr. Sunak plans. (It doesn’t help
that he didn’t appear in front of the media during this month’s contest until
after he had won it.) But from his history as a minister and the summer’s
leadership election, it’s fair to assume that in the name of fiscal rectitude,
he will rein in public spending and cut social protections.
Who knows
whether such an approach, delivered competently and with an air of seriousness,
will resurrect the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes. But at the outset
of his tenure, one thing seems guaranteed: Mr. Sunak, conservative savior,
won’t save the country.
Kimi
Chaddah (@KimiChaddah_) is a freelance British journalist.
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