Sunak seemed such a breath of fresh air. Polite, diligent, hard-working, technically skilled, good at PMQs. It seemed as if he would rescue the Tories, at least to the extent of minimising their defeat.
No longer. Weighed down by a fundamentally divided party, attacked at every turn by the angry Right, it seems as though he has lost his way. Sunak no longer resonates with the public as his strategic policy choices become increasingly confusing. He was the ‘change candidate’, always a struggle after 13 years of Tory rule, but brought back Cameron. He cancelled HS2 to Manchester whilst in… Manchester. And although it might not resonate very widely, as leader of a party that is meant to be in favour of a smaller, non-intrusive State, he announced he would make it an offence for anyone born after 2009 to be sold tobacco. A little populist spat with Greece over the Elgin marbles recently just made Sunak look small and added to questions about his political judgement.
Things are going from bad to worse…
A solid Autumn statement was too little too late. The tax burden is still rising, public services are still failing, and no one is really listening anymore because few believe the Tories will be around in the next few months to implement any longer-term tax and spend plans.
And then the obsession with illegal (and legal) migration. Sunak has refused to face down the Right on this issue, managing to seem weak, incompetent and illiberal all at the same time. Surely, he has nothing to lose. Whatever treaty amendments are made with Rwanda, the policy is now in tatters. Costing £165 million and rising, one doubts a single plane will take off to this destination before the next General Election. He has ignored or is ignoring sensible, practical solutions advocated by his party’s Left, such as constructive cooperation with the EU, because he feels he needs higher profile, more definitively ‘red meat solutions’. The problem with this approach is that he upsets moderate Tory voters and fails to appease his right-wing who are watching the rise of Reform in the polls with increasing alarm.
Net legal migration figures have soared, illegal migration still feels out of control. The new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, has had his past moderate comments on the topic thrown back at him, consequently plummeting down the popularity league table amongst Tory Party members. Crazy.
Sunak appears harried and who could blame him if he has had enough. The Tories need to leave office, move to the Right in private and look forward to many years in the wilderness, before regaining commonsense with an expanded, more representative grassroots base, frankly without the need of a fair proportion of their current membership at all.
Starmer has become a lucky politician and is being treated as the next Prime Minister, which in itself, allows him to gain stature. In the face of all the uneasy compromises Starmer made to become leader, just this week he embraced Thatcher and fiscal conservatism, straight out of the Tony Blair playbook. He can afford to because brutally, suddenly, his Tory opponents have collapsed.
Inside Right Politics 