Analysis
Tories willing to cut Rishi Sunak some slack but
same tough choices remain
Rowena
Mason
Whitehall
editor
If chosen as PM, Sunak would face a dire inheritance
and a narrow window to turn things around
Sun 23 Oct
2022 18.47 BST
More than
150 Conservative MPs came to view Rishi Sunak as their saviour from the
threatened return of a scandal-mired Boris Johnson. But when Sunak was at his
lowest point this year, after revelations about his family’s tax affairs, some
of his closest supporters were unsure whether he really wanted to be prime
minister – or was even that committed to his then job as chancellor.
The
scrutiny of the family took its toll and they moved out of Downing Street for
some breathing space. Some aides wondered at the time whether Sunak would give
up his seat at the next election for a return to his old life in California.
Within
months, Sunak had shown he did have some determination to do the job by
resigning from the Treasury, hastening Johnson’s demise and then running in the
subsequent leadership contest. But his campaign was strangely lacking in
political savvy, allowing itself to be outmanoeuvred by Liz Truss by failing to
understand the concerns and obsessions of Tory members.
Fast-forward
just a few months and Sunak finds himself now cast in the role of Tory messiah
by some of his colleagues. He is seen as the economic fixer who implemented the
furlough scheme during Covid and predicted the disastrous market reaction to
Truss’s unfunded tax cuts. They are now looking to him to do the near
impossible – turn around the party’s low poll ratings and win an election
against Keir Starmer in two years’ time.
But if he
finds himself as prime minister, possibly as soon as Monday, Sunak will have to
find depths of political creativity and diplomacy to deal with a nightmare
in-tray. He has been an MP for just seven years, and was a cabinet minister for
only two, and even colleagues who back him for the premiership acknowledge he
has no breadth of experience across departments to prepare him for the multiple
crises piling up on all fronts.
From the
NHS still struggling with Covid, to the economic situation, to the prospect of
energy blackouts and a threatened winter of discontent with strikes, the UK is
facing a phenomenally difficult six months.
The
Conservatives are also deeply divided in parliament. A broad spectrum of MPs
have come out for Sunak, from Suella Braverman and Steve Baker on the right to
Bob Neill and Stephen Hammond from the centrist wing, and he will have made
many promises in order to extract such support, from Eurosceptics in
particular.
Many of the
dilemmas that Truss faced still remain. Does he go for growth on the back of
higher immigration, or stick to post-Brexit promises of tougher curbs? Can he
keep to Johnson’s 2019 promises of no return to austerity, or will he argue
that the current market conditions mean cuts are essential?
Does he ask
the public to try to cut back their energy use to avoid winter blackouts? Will
he take a conciliatory position towards striking public sector workers or try
to turn it into a culture war issue with Labour? No one knows, because he has
done no media interviews since Truss resigned on Thursday.
At the same
time, some MPs – even among his backers – acknowledge that Sunak can come
across as out of touch with the public, with his penchant for luxury goods, and
his memorable failure to understand how to use a contactless payment card in a
petrol station. At a time of huge struggle for households, he is the richest
member of parliament.
If he wins,
which, with the withdrawal of Johnson from the race, now seems likely, his
inheritance will be dire, so Tory MPs are likely to cut him a degree of slack.
But as a member of the government who contributed to many of the problems the
UK is facing, Sunak would have only a very narrow window of opportunity with
the public to turn things around – and many potentially very unpopular
decisions to make.
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