Ask a politician what feelings they most hope to garner from the public and you would get a smorgasbord of answers. “Hope” would come up often, “respect” too. Some of the more self-aware might even admit that acclaim or adoration were on the list. None would say sympathy, let alone pity. Yet, when it comes to Rishi Sunak, it is hard not to feel a jolt of both.
While he has undeniably underperformed, the Prime Minister inherited an almost impossible task: an anaemic economy, public services on their knees, a tired and discredited party that has become utterly ungovernable, and a populace yearning for change.
As if all that wasn’t enough, he is also having to contend with the fact that there are more former prime ministers buzzing around the political scene than at any point in British history, including five from his own party. While the likes of John Major and Theresa May have stayed dignified in their political swansong, the same cannot be said of other former occupants of Number 10. Sunak is becoming the political Scrooge, continually haunted by the ghosts of Tory leaders past.
Last week, Boris Johnson launched his latest barb at the Government, calling Sunak’s smoking ban “absolutely mad” and criticising what is being done “in the name of conservatism”. Johnson will know full well that this criticism is particularly difficult for his successor, given the number of Tories angered by what they see as the current PM’s lack of true conservative values, epitomised by excessive taxes and a penchant for banning things. Johnson’s outspoken attack on a flagship Sunak policy will embolden Tory libertarians and provide cover for recalcitrant MPs when the smoking ban legislation comes before Parliament this week.
Still the darling of the Tory right, Johnson is once again becoming the Tories’ king across the water – the supposed political titan whose distance from Westminster obscures memories of their flaws and failings in a rose-hinted haze of nostalgia. It is a common phenomenon in politics: just look at how David Miliband’s decade away from British politics has seen his reputation restored in Labour circles, the atrocious campaign that saw him lose to his brother in 2010 entirely forgotten. Among the Tory base, Johnson’s lustre was never fully eroded. The more he demands a return to true conservative values, the more his own star will shine and the more Sunak’s will be tarnished.
Then there is Liz Truss. Her calamitous time as PM means she poses little direct threat to Sunak; because of her credibility deficit, her attacks are more akin to being kicked by a gerbil than mauled by a big political beast.
Still, Truss appears to believe she still hasn’t done quite enough damage to the Tory brand. Touring the world to promote her brand of right-wing free marketeerism, she continues to criticise the current government on multiple fronts and has written a book on her masterplan for saving Western civilisation. A series of interviews and newspaper articles have inevitably followed. Conservative strategists look on in dismay at every new headline. The last thing Sunak wants as he tries to convince people that Britain has turned a corner is the woman who indirectly doubled their mortgage payments popping up to insist that the world is under threat from woke graduates working for the Forestry Commission. The more Truss hits the headlines, the more voters are reminded of the damage she and the Tories did to the country and to their household budgets.
Not all the former PMs are causing problems from outside the tent. Even during his years in the political wilderness, Lord Cameron was not the type to stick the knife into his successors. Bringing him into the Cabinet has guaranteed that Sunak has at least one former PM fully on board. But even Cameron, despite his loyalty, poses a problem for Sunak by highlighting through his political skills precisely what Sunak lacks. The Foreign Secretary is one of the most gifted political communicators of the last decade; Sunak, to put it mildly, is not.
As well as becoming an influential voice around the Cabinet table, Cameron has raised eyebrows with a series of slick social media videos, in which he assuredly updates viewers on what he has been doing in his role. The impressive clarity and authority with which he speaks has raised eyebrows in Westminster. Tory MPs bemoan the fact that their current leader isn’t half as effective a communicator; a few even ponder whether they would be in with a better chance if Cameron was back in charge.
There is a new star player in the Tory team who is overshadowing the captain. His return to frontline politics will also serve to remind voters how little today’s Conservative Party resembles the united, purposeful and disciplined team that Cameron led to victory in 2015.
The activities of his predecessors would matter less if Sunak’s own authority was secure. It isn’t. It is precisely because the Prime Minister is unpopular with voters, distrusted by many of his own MPs and looks to be leading his party to a crushing defeat that the likes of Johnson and Truss can go gallivanting around with such freedom. The knowledge that they can stick the boot in all they like without any real backlash from their former colleagues is a sign of how fissured the Conservative Party currently is, and how lacking is Sunak’s own clout. There was a time when former leaders turning their fire on their own team would have been met with fury and condemnation. No longer.
After all, Tory MPs can hardly quibble about former leaders undermining Sunak when so many of them are engaged in the same activity. Nor are party members fully on his side. The current PM has never commanded the support of his party: while Johnson and Truss both had big support bases in Tory ranks, Sunak never has. He is tolerated, even respected, by the party, but not loved. In the warring family that is the Conservative Party, Sunak is the younger son who inherits the family business only once his more prominent siblings have had a go.
To have even a glimmer of hope of clinging onto power, the Tories need to find some way to unite. Instead, the opposite is happening. Former leaders with their own factions and agendas are fomenting yet more dissent. Ill-discipline breeds ill-discipline. The more the Tories fracture and fragment, the further Sunak’s supremacy is eroded and the more his attempts to turn things around will be in vain. It is a plight worthy of pity.
Ben Kentish presents on LBC Monday to Friday from 10pm
Liz Truss isn't done yet
9
1
16.04.2024
Ask a politician what feelings they most hope to garner from the public and you would get a smorgasbord of answers. “Hope” would come up often, “respect” too. Some of the more self-aware might even admit that acclaim or adoration were on the list. None would say sympathy, let alone pity. Yet, when it comes to Rishi Sunak, it is hard not to feel a jolt of both.
While he has undeniably underperformed, the Prime Minister inherited an almost impossible task: an anaemic economy, public services on their knees, a tired and discredited party that has become utterly ungovernable, and a populace yearning for change.
As if all that wasn’t enough, he is also having to contend with the fact that there are more former prime ministers buzzing around the political scene than at any point in British history, including five from his own party. While the likes of John Major and Theresa May have stayed dignified in their political swansong, the same cannot be said of other former occupants of Number 10. Sunak is becoming the political Scrooge, continually haunted by the ghosts of Tory leaders past.
Last week, Boris Johnson launched his latest barb at the Government, calling Sunak’s smoking ban “absolutely mad” and criticising what is being done “in the name of conservatism”. Johnson will know full well that this criticism is particularly difficult for his successor, given the number of Tories angered by what they see as the current PM’s lack of true conservative values, epitomised by excessive taxes and a penchant for banning things. Johnson’s outspoken attack on a flagship Sunak policy will embolden Tory........
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