Sir Keir Starmer will doubtless give Rishi Sunak both barrels at prime minister’s questions today — the first blast will be his welcome to the new MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, the second his greeting to the freshly minted honourable member for Tamworth. Both of these seats were Conservative citadels until the early hours of Friday — home to 19,000-plus Tory majorities — until the walls crumbled and Labour stormed through the breaches to plant its standards deep inside the Tory shires. There will be jeers aplenty from the Labour benches as Mr Sunak rises to his feet in the Commons. Greater orators than he would struggle to address defeats of such scale. What a way to celebrate one’s first year in office.
All the more reason, then, for Mr Sunak to forget about polls, relaunches and the strategy of being the “change candidate”. Reinvention in office goes only so far and the Tories have undergone more identity swaps in recent years than Dr Who. Mr Sunak must continue to differentiate himself from his two immediate predecessors whose disastrous tenures have made his task so much harder. But repackaging is not the whole answer. In the year left to him before the election, the prime minister must govern in the national, not party, interest. If he does so he may yet survive.
During the past year Mr Sunak has displayed an ability to take decisions that are difficult and in some cases unlikely to yield tangible results for many years. With inflation roaring through the first half of his premiership he refused to bow to excessive public sector pay claims. More recently he grasped the nettle that was HS2. He has also taken on the tobacco industry, instituting a progressive ban on cigarette sales that should spare the vast majority of today’s younger teenagers from the scourge of smoking. And he has been pragmatic in regard to relations with the European Union, slicing his way through the Gordian Knot that was trade across the Northern Ireland border and rejoining the Horizon scientific research alliance. These actions, even if sometimes controversial, speak of a decisive politician willing to take tough decisions in pursuit of what he believes to be the national strategic interest.
The prime minister’s deficiency is not a lack of ability or application — if anything he buries himself too deeply in detail, such is his desire to grasp problems — but in luck. He came in at the wrong time, more than halfway through a parliament scarred by the human and economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
If the year to now had been the first of a five-year term, and if his predecessors had been Labour, Mr Sunak would be regarded as a safe pair of hands making steady progress towards fixing the country and honouring his five pledges. Inflation, though stubborn, should halve from its peak by the end of the year, growth is flat but a recession has so far been avoided and the national debt is at least stable. NHS waiting lists are appalling but striking doctors must share the blame for that. As for illegal migrants crossing the Channel by small boats, the number so far this year — 26,500 — suggests a lower total than the 45,800 of last year.
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These remedial goals are hardly the stuff of sunlit uplands. Mr Sunak is saddled with the legacy of his party’s 13 years in power. His low personal ratings owe more to this than his actual performance. But who said life — political life especially — was fair? Polling consistently points to a Conservative wipeout next year. The public’s preference appears to be for an election in May. That is unlikely to be because it wants to pat the Tories on the back. Solution: more of that steady progress based on what is right rather than expedient. If the economy rallies so may Mr Sunak’s prospects. In the meantime he must take Churchill’s prescription for adversity: KBO — keep buggering on.
