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So Rishi Sunak is the change candidate, and Labour leader Keir Starmer represents the “old politics”. That was the heart of the prime minister’s message to his party conference. It’s certainly daring. But what if voters just want competent government?
Six months ago, Downing Street was intending to run the next election on a platform of “I’m delivering, let me finish the job”. Sunak has forged a new defence partnership with the US, signed the Windsor framework with the EU, and devised the first workforce plan for the NHS. But in a country wracked by inflation and strikes, someone has clearly decided that “I’m delivering” won’t cut it.
To be convincing as a change candidate, Sunak needed to take on his own party — perhaps over housebuilding. Instead, he let it succumb to its worst instincts. There was an ugly tone at last week’s conference — at times it felt more like a Tea Party gathering than that of a governing party. A grinning Nigel Farage, attending as a GB News presenter, stalked the corridors posing for selfies. The transport secretary endorsed a weird conspiracy that 15-minute cities — which provide amenities within walking distance — are a sinister plot by councils “to decide how often you go to the shops”.
Sunak — who spoke of his pride both in being Britain’s first ethnic minority prime minister and in that being unremarkable — endorsed a Tory candidate for mayor of London who critics felt made a racial slur against the incumbent, Sadiq Khan, at a conference fringe event in what is shaping up to be a rerun of the Tories’ gutter campaign of 2016.
Immigration was swept up into the same nastiness. It serves no one to ignore the strains on local services, or to deny that Europe is struggling to maintain its borders. But home secretary Suella Braverman’s talk of “a hurricane” was loathsome — it plays straight into the hands of those who like to dismiss all concerns as racist.
Against this backdrop, with a largely gormless cabinet, it is hardly surprising that Sunak plans to run a presidential campaign, positioning the next election as Sunak vs Starmer. The Labour leader, he claimed, is “the walking definition of the status quo of the past 30 years” during which politicians had not been honest about trade-offs.
This was a pointed attack on the cakeism of Boris Johnson and, more bizarrely, on every post-Thatcher prime minister. It felt less effective as a challenge to Starmer, who has spent the past year cutting exorbitant spending pledges. Accusing Starmer of being “cautious” also feels odd. After the soap opera of the past few years, I can’t be the only person relieved that the choice next year is between a spreadsheet nerd and a careful lawyer.
Sunak’s own caution is, in fact, a strength. The thing which is uppermost in his mind at the moment, which hangs like a cloud over Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, is the state of the public finances and the turbulence in the gilts market. Britain’s borrowing costs are rising, along with those of many other countries. Add in the war in Ukraine and the chancellor has little wriggle room ahead of next month’s Autumn Statement.
Every government decision currently flows from this: resistance to tax cuts, desperation to constrain the burgeoning welfare budget and the refusal to pay strikers more than pay review bodies have recommended. The ban on smoking announced by Sunak, and the proposed overhaul of exams, come with negligible short-term impact. Meanwhile, the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 is because the budget was allowed to balloon from £32bn to over £90bn.
If I was Starmer, I would much prefer to be framed as cautious, rather than scary. While they won’t miss an opportunity to remind the public of his loyalty to predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, the Tories have rightly concluded this can only take them so far. In an accelerated timescale, Starmer has already played the Neil Kinnock role, taking on the hard left of his party, plus the John Smith role, making it feel safe to vote Labour. As Labour’s own party conference gets under way in Liverpool this weekend, the question is whether he can get the hat-trick: do a Tony Blair and inspire.
Centre-left parties struggle to articulate a programme without money — as many did in Europe after the financial crisis. But the Conservatives’ astonishing lack of interest, since 2016, in public sector reform provides fertile ground for an opposition which has already taken a brave stance against vested interests in the NHS.
There is much muttering among Labour supporters about Starmer’s lack of charisma, and his so-far thin set of policies. Some MPs feel the leadership is too timid, afraid to say almost anything in case the precious vase of hope crashes to pieces on the floor before they carry it across the threshold to power. Other Labour figures point out that while the party is ahead in the polls, it still needs a substantial swing to win.
While Labour has its own lunatic fringe, this week has shown us the Tory version. Labour still looks too metropolitan, and too uncomfortable talking about immigration, to convince all swing voters. But Sunak may not have helped himself by implying that when he changes his mind, it’s a strength; but if Starmer does so, it’s weak.
Sunak is not a convincing revolutionary. Neither is Starmer. And that’s good. The country is exhausted by high drama in office, by false dawns and fake promises. I’m ashamed to say it, but what I really felt in Manchester was: please can we get on with it and just have an election? I’m not sure I can bear 12 more months of this.
