Rishi Sunak outlasts Liz Truss at Downing Street, but it's a rough sail

By still holding office on December 9, Rishi Sunak has outlasted his predecessor Liz Truss’s brief stay at No 10 Downing Street and avoided the ignominy of becoming the shortest serving prime minister of the United Kingdom in history.

Truss’s 45 days in power were tumultuous and chaotic. Sunak’s time has been calmer but certainly cannot be called smooth sailing. Truss’s mini-budget had crashed the financial markets and the pound sterling. Sunak, seen as the choice of the markets, has certainly reassured them, settled interest rates and brought an element of stability to the government’s economic policy, but that’s about it.

Struggle for wages

Sunak has not been able to stem the cost-of-living crisis that has gripped the UK. Inflation still remains at a high 10 per cent and wages are pitifully low, making vast sections of society poorer. In the run up to Christmas, the time for good cheer, Britons are faced with a rash of strikes – postal workers, train drivers, ambulance drivers and even an unprecedented strike by nurses – all demanding a pay rise that at least gives them a living wage.

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Politically, the situation is even worse for the accidental Prime Minister who is facing rebellions from Conservative backbenchers on a variety of issues. He has had to do a number of U-turns in such a short time that it is eroding his political credibility. As it is, Sunak is just 42 years old and is the youngest prime minister that the UK has had in 200 years, but added to that, he has only been an MP since 2015. His tender age and lack of experience are accentuated by the about-turns that make him look like a political lightweight.

His opponent, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, has already dubbed him a ‘weak’ prime minister and one without a mandate from either Conservative party members or the public at large. Starmer, who sees himself as the prime minister-in-waiting, and Labour have been leading in national opinion polls ever since Boris Johnson was forced to resign from the prime ministership in July this year. In recent polls the Tories are anything between 14 and 30 points behind Labour – that is a huge gap.

Bypoll failure

Just 38 days into his premiership, Sunak had his first electoral test with a byelection in the city of Chester. The results were brutal. While the Tories were not expected to snatch the seat away from Labour, they did not expect the thumping victory that Labour got either – winning the highest majority in the seat with a 14-point vote swing. The Conservative Party lost badly, its vote share dropping from 38.3 per cent in 2019 to 22.4 per cent, which is the lowest vote share it has received in the constituency since 1832.

Chester is a bellwether constituency and the by-election result confirmed the current opinion that Labour would win a comfortable majority if a general election were held today. Furthermore, it provides evidence that Labour is rebuilding its support in its traditional stronghold of north England seats, known as the red wall, many of which it lost to the Tories in 2019, giving them their large majority in the House of Commons.

With the countdown to the next general election started – due in 2024 – Sunak doesn’t have much time to improve the Conservatives’ chances. The Tories themselves seem to have given up hope of winning the next election. As many as 13 sitting MPs have already announced that they will not contest the next election and the list is likely to get longer closer to the time. It is not just the veterans who have decided to call it a day, but even the rising stars of Tories, like Sajid Javid, the Pakistani-origin MP who was Chancellor of the Exchequer just before Sunak was given the job.

Javid is only 53 and has been in politics since 2010. He has held six cabinet positions, including two great offices of state, heading up the Treasury and the Home Office. In fact, Javid became the first person of South-Asian origin to be made Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and to run for the Tory leadership in 2019.

Fear of losing

Most Tory MPs who are standing down are convinced that they will lose their seats, or even if they win, the Conservatives will not be forming the next government. The party has been in power since 2010 and has won four successive general elections. The MPs have become habituated to being in power and dread the thought of sitting in Opposition.

Many of the red wall MPs, who snatched traditional Labour seats in 2019, are convinced that the constituencies will go back to Labour thanks to the mess made by Truss. The prosperous South England seats, which have traditionally voted Conservative, are also threatening to go to the Liberal Democrats or the relatively new Reform UK party.

In fact, what should really worry Sunak is that Conservative grassroots members and supporters, disheartened with his tax and immigration policies, are beginning to defect to Reform UK. The far-right Reform UK emerged from the ashes of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, and has shown a rise in support in opinion polls ever since Sunak took up residence at Downing Street.

Right-wing pressure

Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice has not been slow to see the opportunity opening up and has been offering tax cuts and stricter immigration controls to Tory right-wingers. It must be remembered that Sunak was made prime minister by Conservative MPs and the Tory members were not given a chance to vote, unlike in the summer when they had rejected Sunak for Truss.

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Many of the right-wing members see Sunak’s economic policies as un-Conservative, particularly his refusal to cut taxes. Even on immigration, though Suella Braverman has been foisted by the Tory right on Sunak as Home Secretary, the optics of the boat-migration crisis on British shores have harmed the government.

A winter of discontent is looming with power cuts in the offing and daily strikes by various unions. Sunak has been keeping a low profile after his mini budget on November 17. Many of Sunak’s MPs and supporters are waiting for his big idea which will define his prime ministership. He must not take too long otherwise he will become known as the prime minister who led the Conservatives to their biggest electoral disaster.

(Sajeda Momin has held senior positions in Indian newspapers and now divides her time between Kolkata and London) 

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