Rishi Sunak’s Bizarre Political Strategy

Source: Open Democracy

By Honest John

IT’S HARD to believe that it was just nine months ago that Rishi Sunak became leader of the Conservative Party and therefore, absurdly, the fifth Tory Prime Minister in thirteen years, and stood in front of Downing Street to promise the British public “professionalism, accountability and integrity” after three years of debauched corruption under Boris Johnson and gimlet-eyed ideological lunacy under Liz Truss. In those heady autumn days there was real worry on the Labour front bench and hope on the part of right wing political opinion not infected by the corroding virus of the Johnsonian cult, that “Rish!” (as he hilariously termed himself in last summer’s leadership contest), might give the Tories once again the opportunity to re-invent themselves - to sweep away the putrid remnants of Johnson’s legacy and to despatch Truss’ “ideas” back to the Tufton Street parallel universe from whence they had escaped. Sunak could basically tell the electorate despite nearly thirteen years of Tory rule that there was actually nothing to see here and could we all just start again, please? Indeed, in late 2022 and early 2023, pollsters detected a “Rishi bounce”, as Labour’s opinion poll lead narrowed to a ‘mere’ fourteen points. Could Sunak be the man to do it again? Could the billionaire tech bro from Silicon Valley cut through to the public, reassure the Blue Wall that “normal” Toryism was back and shore up the sliding Red Wall by, improbably, reassuring its voters he understood their pain and that levelling up would at last be delivered?

Alas, no. After that initial bout of optimistic public curiosity about the relatively politically opaque Sunak, he has revealed himself to be as bereft of ideas as his party: his low bar “pledges” in danger of 100% non-achievement; his Austerity 2.0 budget restricting any serious management of, or investment in, the post-Brexit economy; and he appears paralysed in the face of an inflation that refuses in any meaningful way to subside, and public services finally buckling under the damage of Cameron-era austerity and the final collapse of the Thatcherite economic model. As a result Labour have re-established a 20 point opinion poll lead, safe Conservative council and Parliamentary seats fall to whichever party can defeat the Tories and Keir Starmer is forecast to achieve a General Election victory on an epic scale, one that could reduce Tory representation in the Commons to less than 200 seats. Is Rishi downhearted by this collapse of personal and political support, in which his leadership and his party’s approval ratings are now lower than those of Boris Johnson when he was forced out by the Tory parliamentary party on the grounds that that he was, well, unelectable? Not at all. Rishi has a plan. His new political strategy is to pretend he is the Leader of the Opposition.

Not fazed by the fact that banging on about Britain’s “broken immigration system” - run by the Tories for thirteen years - for the last twelve months has not shifted the dial on the government’s dire poll ratings one iota, Sunak has seen hope in the unexpected Conservative win in the Uxbridge by election and decided that running against government policy (like ULEZ) could yet save his political bacon. Even Rishi can appreciate that the government blaming the Tories for the country’s ills might be a slightly weird look, so he has hit on the wizard wheeze of blaming the hell hole that is modern Britain on the Labour Party.

Sunak’s entire political strategy is now to campaign against the green policies his own government introduced, commitment to net zero by 2030 now replaced by Rishi as “friend of the motorist”, unlike Just Stop Oil-supporting Labour and its preposterous Green Prosperity Plan; to brief against the Bank of England’s interest rate rises despite only weeks ago Sunak praising the Bank’s determination to bring down inflation by, yes, interest rate rises; to claim Labour are thwarting the ability of a government with an 80 seat majority to enact its anti migration legislation, that has already been passed into law, due to Labour’s disgraceful collusion with “lefty lawyers”, and to blame record NHS waiting lists on Labour’s trade union paymasters bringing services grinding to a halt and holding patients to ransom. Poor Rishi, he could do such good if it wasn’t for that darned Labour Party thwarting his every move.

This whole approach is simultaneously hilarious and profoundly depressing. Government tactics have become a reactive game of sub-fascist rhetoric, blame and mendacity to try, somehow, to persuade the public that voting Labour at the next election will ruin all the good things the Tories have visited on the country over 13 years in office and prevent them from getting on and “finishing the job”. The whole campaign is as bizarre as it is funny and will as ineffective as it is nasty and childish. There are indeed limits to voter prejudice and credulity: their lived experience of shopping in a supermarket, of trying to get a GP appointment or an NHS dentist, of going on holiday in a burning Europe and the sheer horror of seeing effluent being poured into Britain’s waterways and shorelines by under-regulated water companies has told them all they need to know about the truth of Tory Britain. No amount of migrant-baiting and new oil drilling licenses can alter the fact day to day life for tens of thousands of people is basically rubbish. The Conservatives and their execrable right wing media mouthpieces can continue to broadcast their bile out of Radio Nowhere, but no one is listening to the cant and broken promises any longer. Hapless Rishi may yet achieve a status not reached by any of his predecessors, despite stiff competition. Sunak may be looked back on by political historians as the most ridiculous Prime Minister in recent times.

...First, we massively overestimated the strength of our negotiating position. It is true we are equally sovereign as the EU, but we are not sovereign equals. They are much larger, and we depend on them much more for trade than they do on us. That is why we have had to back down every step of the way, accepting EU insistence that we agree the divorce agreement first, putting a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., accepting a single legal treaty and finally Boris Johnson caving in just before the end-of-year deadline. The same disparity of strength exists with the U.S., and we should bear that in mind during trade negotiations with Washington. 

Second, we fired the starting gun before we had worked out our own position, with the result that we spent the first two years negotiating with ourselves while EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s clock was ticking. Triggering Article 50 — the legal mechanism that kicked off a time-limited exit process — before we were ready meant we constantly found ourselves facing a self-inflicted deadline by which we had to concede or face severe economic and political costs. We should have waited until we knew what we wanted and only then pulled the trigger rather than blundering in without knowing our desired end point. This was not the fault of the negotiators but of their political leaders...

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