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October 31, 2024 - 7:00am
In his response to Wednesday’s Budget, we saw a flash of what Rishi Sunak could have been. His final appearance as Tory leader was energetic and animated. He cut into Labour’s tax plans incisively and buoyed the spirits of the Opposition MPs behind him. It was a side we rarely saw during his time in Downing Street, but it would have been welcome.
More than that, Sunak was once again proven correct. He had spent the summer warning that Labour would bring in unheralded tax rises, testing its pledges around “working people to the limit”. He was vindicated. It wasn’t the first time, either. In another contest two years ago, he spent a summer warning the world about his opponent’s plans, only to be roundly beaten before being proven right in the autumn. Unlike with Liz Truss, however, this time he won’t be handed a second chance.
Instead, it is now time for Sunak to ponder his legacy. For most prime ministers, it seems, being out of office reflects well on them. Theresa May has enjoyed a particular rehabilitation, perhaps in light of those who came after. For Rishi, you can see it shaping up already — more focus on the praise he received for his Covid-19 response as Chancellor, an acknowledgement that the Tory Party he took over was already sunk, added to those correct positions on the economy, and in hindsight he perhaps doesn’t look that bad.
Perhaps Sunak’s real tragedy was the speed of his ascendancy. It is really quite remarkable that he is a washed-up has-been of Westminster already. An ex-prime minister at just 44 years old, less than a decade after becoming an MP, is an amazing speed-run of political life. It is perhaps also a sign that the chaos of the Conservative Party wasted his talents.
Sunak had his strengths but was let down both by himself and by those around him. He took over a party that had worn through its talents and its enthusiasm for governing. His own limitations didn’t help. He had little instinct for what he wanted to do with power, making his government listless. He was also quite bad at politics, from making unforced errors such as the D-Day debacle to failing to find a proper strategic vision for his premiership.
With a little more time, he might have avoided this. He was party leader in a difficult time, but also before he was ready. He’d barely experienced general elections from the inside, nor had time in junior ministries to hone his political viewpoints. His radical rise, first to chancellor, then PM, came at the expense of learning the slower lessons of Westminster. In an alternative world, Sunak is perhaps an entrant in the current leadership contest, pitching to rebuild the party after someone else broke it.
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SubscribeHe was undone by manouevring to dispatch both B Johnson and Liz Truss. There was an absence of trust from the Right of the party after that. It almost felt as if they wanted Reform to give the liberal Tories a real punishing. Unfortunately, a truly ghastly Labour Party have been the recipients of such manoeuvres. The UK now has a government that represents a small fraction of its economy.
Unlike with Liz Truss, Sunak didn’t get ambushed by the Bank of England.
Kemi for leader, Rishi back to being Chancellor crunching financial policy, leaving the parliamentary drama to a firebrand. Probably won’t happen, sad because we seriously need people with genuine business experience.
It doesn’t matter who is driving the train when the wheels have broken off.
And working for Goldman Sachs and hedge funds gives you experience in Finance, not Business Experience.
We also need Industrial Experience.
I suspect you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about! Goldman Sachs is certainly a business, which generates wealth and pays taxes, albeit that you (and I!) might have little understandings of what it actually does.
That’s the thing about capitalism – it is by now a very sophisticated system! The distinction between the “real economy” and finance is pretty meaningless in market terms, albeit it might well be that different sections of the population benefit differently from different types of business. Making money from selling services, that someone wants to buy (!) isn’t intrinsically less valuable than making money from selling stuff. And is for example the key industry today making steel as at one time it would have been?
I think history will be kinder to Sunak than it will be to Johnson, Truss, and May. Yes he made some poor decisions: D-Day memorials, election timing, etc.
However, given the nature of the hospital pass he received, he did as good a job as possible. The Tory party was a spent force by the time he arrived and it’s electoral fate already sealed by 14 years of broken promises and centrist rot.
He’s got intellect – you don’t survive Winchester without that – I am sure he will re-materialise in the US somewhere in private equity or a hedge fund and spend time on the speaker circuit. In which regard he will fare much better than those who are left behind in the UK.
Truss was ambushed by the Bank of England and promoted the North Sea Oil/Gas Industry, and domestic Fraccing, a sign that she recognised that Hope is best fueled by cheap Energy.
She should return to the fray.
Yes, Sunak is a hedge fund animal.
I suspect the reason Sunak appeared not to have a strategy for government is that he didn’t.
He’s a very rich man married into an even richer family. Who will now go on to leverage his connections to get even richer in some sort of consultant ambassador type role.
None of which necessarily makes him a bad person. But being PM was really just a line on his CV. Like a future business leader being put in charge of a junior department to tick the experience and credibility boxes.
He badly wanted to be PM, but once he got there, with a lot of help from his cronies’ and his own behind the scenes manoeuvering, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do.
He ducked a lot of decisions and followed the ghastly Net Zero scam almost to the letter.
Not sure about the Theresa May rehabilitation thing. Definitely the worst PM of my lifetime (MacMillan was PM when I was born).
Oh l don’t know about May being the worst pm of my lifetime. Pretty poor I agree but l’d still put Callaghan as the worst closely followed by Heath and Brown. Truss would have to be in there as well along with Major for signing us up to the Mastrich treaty.
Mind you, Starmfuhrer has made a good start to displacing Callaghan for top spot and has plenty of time to get there.
Of course it will always be a great mystery why Rishi Sunak called the election so early. But then he was never actually very good at politics – his chosen career.
‘Theresa May has enjoyed a particular rehabilitation, perhaps in light of those who came after.”
Not with me. That woman is the worst Prime Minister in living memory and I doubt that even Keir Starmer is going to beat her in that ignominious contest.
As for Rishi Sunak, I’ve always said that he personally clearly isn’t a bad chap at all, but was clearly not suited to the office of PM. That’s no insult: he is an impressively capable person in spheres outside politics who still has at least two decades of notable achievement ahead of him. No tears need to be shed for him at all. The worst I can say about him is that he put to bed a Tory Party that had lost its way, lost its capacity to govern, and lost the desire to even do that.
Theresa May – ghastly Tory PM – as were Major and Cameron. They wreaked irreparable damage on the nation and their party. Awful people!
Rishi has enjoyed probing Starmer in recent weeks, often able to turn an apt phrase. But abandoned that approach in his response to the Budget, reverting to the shouty sloganising that put his standing on the slide when PM. Didn’t connect with what had actually been presented at all and just sounded stupid. What a sad way to finish up.
Betteridge’s law strikes again…