Rishi Sunak’s speech to delegates at the Conservative party conference was an attempt to present himself as a radical break from a failed political and economic consensus. This is a gamble that smacks of desperation and panic. Voters blame the Conservatives for the country’s parlous state. The Labour party looks on course to win the next election, which is probably just a year away. This week, many Tories were obsessed not with losing power but rather with the ferocious fight for the leadership that they think will follow an inevitable defeat.
Campaigning as a change candidate is the option of last resort for Mr Sunak. He needs to convince voters that the Tory party, in power for 13 years, has not run out of steam. Mr Sunak is his own man: he is more fiscally conservative than Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Among his proposals to fix the country were cutting waste, reducing demand on the NHS by banning today’s children from ever smoking, and improving the quality of workers by making students study maths and English until 18. The last of these policies won’t be ready until 2033 – somewhat blunting its electoral appeal.
But Mr Sunak’s big decision was the worst-kept secret of the week. In Manchester he confirmed that he would scrap the northern leg of the rail line HS2. This was a mistake, one amplified by making it in the very city that would have been one of the scheme’s principal beneficiaries. But the move allowed him to cast the project as a white elephant, one which benefited the vested interests that pushed for it. Under Mr Sunak, only the London-to-Birmingham leg will remain – with the prime minister claiming that the resources would be better redistributed to connect cities in England’s north with each other, rather than with the capital. In itself, this is not an unattractive prospect. But it is a “jam tomorrow” policy. Given how easily promises about HS2 were discarded, offering such a pledge engenders little confidence that it will be kept.
The Tory leader’s address aimed to redraw the remain/leave divide by seeking a cross-class alliance against those who identify with the political consensus that has existed since Margaret Thatcher left office. Woven into the speech were the staple themes of migration, motoring and woke culture, as well as cheap jibes at alleged “rip-off degrees”. In parts this felt like a standard monologue on the rightwing TV channel GB News.
The crisis in British society, of which the 2016 Brexit vote was a symptom, is ongoing. The Conservative party cannot reconcile voters’ desire for better public services with its own small-state instincts. Mr Sunak’s hero is the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, who endorsed him in last summer’s Tory leadership race, suggesting the Thatcherite “election-winning formula” was to tackle inflation by shrinking the state and then offering tax cuts.
Mr Sunak seems to be following such a strategy. But the deeper the malaise that Britons feel, the more transformational the solutions that are needed. These are not on offer. That might explain why the Tory vote share remains stubbornly behind Labour’s, despite high-profile announcements on net zero and immigration. Income inequality in the UK is among the highest in Europe. Mr Sunak is right that the current governing model won’t be tolerated, but that is because too few benefit from it and too many are failed by it. The prescriptions outlined in his speech today will not solve that central problem.
