It was one of the many strange quirks of the summer Tory leadership contest: that Liz Truss captured the mantle of the true blue Conservative while Rishi Sunak found himself painted as a wet, Cameronite liberal.
But in the past five months of his premiership, that portrayal of Sunak has started to become laughable. He is perhaps the most socially conservative prime minister of his generation, more so than Truss, Boris Johnson or even Theresa May.
Both his predecessors were happy to play to the Tory gallery on culture wars but Johnson as London mayor was a liberal on immigration and gay rights, and Truss was a stalwart at LGBTQ+ Conservative events, and as a student campaigned on drug legalisation.
May, who took a draconian approach to migration at the Home Office, also took a strong stance against stop and search, modern slavery and backed a ban on trans conversion practices.
There has been a tendency to see Sunak’s focus on issues such as trans rights, grooming gangs and small boats as politically expedient ways for the formerly California-dwelling technocrat to win over his party.
Those close to him say that is demonstrably untrue. Far from being convenient red meat to the Tory members in the leadership election, his views on social issues such as gender, drugs, crime and migration are deeply conservative.
Sunak is said to be personally driven, in particular on the Equality Act and trans rights. He has taken a direct interest in Kemi Badenoch’s drive to change the Equality Act to allow organisations to bar trans women from single-sex spaces and events, including hospital wards and sports. It would redefine sex in the 2010 act to specifically refer to legal protections for “biological sex”.
No 10 sources have pointed out that was a formal pledge from Sunak from his leadership campaign, as well as one to review sex education material in schools. But, strikingly, it is one of the few pledges from that campaign that has survived. Others, such as fines for missing GP appointments, have been unceremoniously discarded.
There have been a number of other examples. Sunak gambled on vetoing Nicola Sturgeon’s gender recognition reform bill, and the prime minister is also thought to be taking a keen interest in the new guidance being considered for schools this term on transgender pupils, which would tell single-sex schools they cannot be obliged to admit trans students.
The number of pupils to which it will apply is likely to be negligible – but it is the talk of certain circles since it was raised by the Girls’ Day School Trust, which runs 25 educational facilities in England and Wales. Sunak’s daughters attend single-sex private schools.
The key area Sunak is exercised about is the rights of parents to be kept informed by the school on whether their child is questioning their gender identity, a move that some LGBTQ+ charities have said children may be keeping from their parents for good reason if they believe they are at risk from their own families.
But both Sunak and the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, are said to be determined that much higher regard is given to parental involvement and consent when it comes to pronouns, gender identity and sex education.
It is not just trans rights, which has become the unfortunate main battleground of the culture wars, where Sunak is demonstrating his deep social conservatism. He has made “stopping the boats” one of his five priorities and is set to make it virtually impossible for refugees to seek asylum in the UK apart from through an extremely narrow set of country-specific routes.
Again, this is not just the personal drive of Suella Braverman but of Sunak himself. Braverman, sacked just hours previously by Truss, was restored as home secretary as a price for backing Sunak’s succession – or so it was said. She was variably described as the shield behind which Sunak could hide his more liberal persuasions. That, again, now seems demonstrably untrue.
Sunak has been at the forefront of Braverman’s drive on grooming gangs – and although seemingly unwilling to echo her language, he has never disavowed it. It is another of the few pledges from his leadership campaign to have survived.
He also becomes obviously personally exercised on the subject of illegal drugs and is enthusiastic about banning nitrous oxide, calling the cannisters a “scourge” and promising a zero-tolerance approach.
Sunak may well reap some electoral rewards by trying to straddle both wings of the Conservative party – leaning into his social conservatism, which is more in line with the perceived average traditional Conservative voter, and then advantaged in Liberal Democrat-leaning seats by being – wrongly – seen as a liberal.
Of course, the risk is that his enthusiasm for the culture wars backfires in the blue wall, while the economy tanks him in the “red wall”.
