“Rishi Sunak is a man in a hurry,” briefs his Downing Street press secretary. Yes, indeed: Tory prime minister No 5, your time is nearly up. But not just yet. If he is serious about “change”, about “broken politics” and “long-term” policies, he could still leave a legacy many will thank him for.
He pitched his speech as a serious man, mainly full of policy, with less of the culture war absurdities and seven-bin silliness he has allowed advisers to inject, injuring his reputation for earnestness. It was odd to make cancelling Britain’s only symbolic construction project his big announcement, but it was a serious decision with no obvious political upside. Ditto a raising of the legal smoking age and A-level reform. None of this looks like a coherent political philosophy – but nor does it look like the recent litany of crude electioneering designed to just draw dividing lines between the Tories and Labour.
Let us imagine that he is, or could be, the man who makes the tough decisions previous governments on both sides have ducked. There is a rising stack of issues in the too-difficult tray on his desk that both parties know need to be fixed – yet neither have dared to. Everyone knows they must be resolved; everyone bats them over the fence for other politicians to deal with in the future. Sunak knows his time is up. Yet he has a full year with a strong majority to do more or less what he likes, if he can command enough support across the whole House of Commons – which he might, if, as with his policy on smoking, Labour gave him their support and enough of his beleaguered sensibles backed him.
Here’s what he could do within the confines of Conservatism (no one could even fantasise that this fiscal austerian might make a Damascene conversion to social democracy). Start with council tax, the disastrously unjust and failed local tax system, in which houses are banded according to 1991 valuations as a result of John Major introducing a temporary emergency system to quickly end the catastrophic poll tax that brought down Margaret Thatcher. This needs both parties to agree, because the handful of better-off losers would shriek louder than the great majority of winners, who would celebrate. Which is why it remains stuck in the too-difficult tray.
This out of date and arbitrary tax sees the most valuable properties in 1991 (band H) attract just three times as much tax as the least valuable properties (band A), despite being worth at least eight times as much back then. It would be a great leveller, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, socially and geographically, between and within local authorities. Of course there’s no time to do it, but to legislate on the principle and set a revaluation in motion would oblige Labour to carry out a Tory-backed reform it would never dare to propose itself – and face the music when new bills were issued.
Next, social care, which both parties have sworn blind they would reform. The national insurance levy introduced by Boris Johnson in 2021, abolished by Liz Truss, needs to be restored, along with charging pensioners national insurance: they need the service most, and should pay according to income. Restoring Labour’s excellent 2010 white paper policy, to make everyone with means contribute a lump sum on retirement should be restored, too, though that would be well beyond Tory tolerance.
As for broken politics, I wouldn’t expect a Tory PM to consider electoral reform: the party’s changes have all been designed to repress votes and remove the little supplementary voting there was. But it is just conceivable that the PM, best known for his mega-wealth, his US green card and his wife’s non-dom tax avoiding, might wish to repair that reputation by cleaning up financial corruption in politics. No more donations beyond small, reasonable sums. No more peerages or favours for donors. The Trussites would fight tooth and claw against the state funding of parties, but Labour would find it hard not to support, although it would lose the unions’ millions. Voters at elections could tick a box for which party they would gift their state allocation to. That would restore a measure of faith in an electorate that has grown alarmingly contemptuous of politics.
“Let Rishi be Rishi” is the Tories’ campaign tactic. I’ve no idea who the real Rishi is, but it’s not working as of yet. If the aim is to show him as serious and diligent about the state of the nation, then challenging Labour and all other parties to consent to necessary change would demonstrate a man ready to put country before callow politics. Or is he actually the cynical, political game-player, keener to create culture war dividing lines with Labour than to govern? Far too late now for any of this to save his bacon at the election, but it would lay down a challenge to other parties that voters would notice – and it might improve his waning reputation as a statesman.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
