10 days of Sunak: Honeymoon over, UK PM must get down to brass tacks

Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Indian-origin Prime Minister, is only into his second week in his new job and already the honeymoon is over.

Apart from trying to sort out the economic mess made by his predecessor Liz Truss with her mini-budget that finally forced her to resign and allowed Sunak to become the first prime minister of colour, the new prime minister has to deal with the problems created by a home secretary that Truss had sacked.

The Braverman conundrum

Suella Braverman, also of Indian-origin, was forced to resign by Truss the day before she herself stepped down from the prime minister’s post, for having broken the ministerial code by sending sensitive emails from her personal address. A week later Sunak, reappointed Braverman as Home Secretary, upsetting senior bureaucrats and arming the Opposition with questions of a “grubby deal” struck by the two leaders.

Labour Party leader Sir Kier Starmer hammered the point home arguing that the only reason why Sunak had brought Braverman back after she had been sacked for data security breach was to secure her support to become the new prime minister without a full vote of Conservative Party members which he felt he would lose as he did two months earlier.

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There is no denying that Braverman is the darling of the Conservative right, while Sunak is considered to be more centre-left, so much so that Jacob Rees Mogg, a former minister and close ally of ex-prime minister Boris Johnson had abused Sunak by calling him a ‘socialist’. The right-wingers only agreed to Sunak becoming prime minister without a party member election once Braverman threw her support behind Sunak. Presumably the quid pro quo that the right extracted was that Braverman would be reappointed Home Secretary.

Sunak’s muted response to Starmer’s barbs of a simple ‘she has accepted her mistake and should be given a second chance’ gave even more credence to the allegations of a ‘grubby deal’. Even as Sunak was still smarting from the accusations, the Home office became involved in another scandal – the horrible living conditions of asylum seekers at the Manston Air Force Base camp in Kent. Braverman was accused of losing control of a refugee centre as well as putting the country’s security at risk.

Demands for her removal came thick and fast, but Sunak cannot afford to let Braverman go at this juncture without risking his own prime ministership. Right-wing Tories want one of their own in the Cabinet and Braverman is that person. Her desire to cut down immigration into the UK to the tens of thousands and dreams of a plane full of failed asylum seekers taking off for Rwanda are shared by the Tory grassroots as evidenced by the applause and standing ovations she received at the party’s annual conference last month.

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Braverman is ambitious and the Conservatives want a tough Home Secretary who is willing to take on the critics to try to plug the UK’s porous southern border. Right-wing MPs believe she is the last chance they have to deal with the immigration crisis before the general elections. Moreover Sunak cannot afford to remove her now and send her to the backbenches where she would emerge as the touchstone for criticism of the Home Office and whoever takes over from her.

Sunak needs Williamson to survive

Even as the Braverman fire had not been doused, The Sunday Times revealed that another of Sunak’s ministers, Sir Gavin Williamson was facing an investigation by Conservative Central Headquarters for sending a series of expletive-laden messages to the Chief Whip Wendy Morton, expressing his anger at not having been invited to the Queen’s funeral in September.

Williamson is a close ally of Sunak who helped him rally MPs support during both his leadership campaigns, and in turn Sunak made him minister of state in the Cabinet Office as soon as he became prime minister. The revelations are presenting a further headache for Sunak who was already facing criticism for reappointing both Williamson and Braverman.

Sunak had promised his administration would have “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street on the day he took office, taking off from the fact that Johnson had been felled because his government had lacked all three. However both the Braverman and Williamson scandals are calling into question Sunak’s judgement and the way he has made his decisions about his Cabinet.

 U-turn on COP27

Another bad decision by Sunak was to announce as soon as he became prime minister that he would not be attending the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt because he was “focusing on the depressing domestic challenges we have with the economy”. Into the vacuum jumped Johnson who announced he would attend COP27 even if the prime minister would not. Five days after his announcement Sunak made an embarrassing U-turn and said he would attend the climate summit after all.

A number of countries had criticised Sunak’s earlier decision not to go and questioned the UK’s commitment to tackling the climate crisis. The Egyptian government had even voiced its disappointment, while others had said that it looked as if the UK was washing its hands of leadership.

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This whole debacle has shown Sunak’s political immaturity. He could have simply said that he was waiting till nearer the time of the summit to decide if he has the time and space to go. Starmer accused the prime minister of acting in the name of political management rather than national interest. It showed that the environment was not a priority for Sunak and he was only going after being embarrassed by Johnson’s attendance. As Starmer said “Succumbing to criticism is not leadership”.

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Sunak cannot afford to make any more such mistakes. He has a lot to learn but no time to learn it. Truss’s 45 days in office were filled with turmoil and errors that her government was called childish and there was a clamour for grown-ups to take control of the reins. When Rishi formed his Cabinet there was jubilation that the adults were back, however in the first 10 days of the new government there appears to be little evidence of that.