U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak marked a year in office on Wednesday with little to celebrate as wars on the international stage make a grim backdrop to his domestic challenges.
On top of that, another year seems to be haunting his Conservative Party: 1996.
Then — as now — the party had been in power for well over a decade, but opinion polls put the opposition ahead and Conservative dissent and scandal dominated the headlines. The following year, voters booted the Tories out, delivering a landslide victory to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party.
Many Conservatives fear the party faces the same fate in an election that must be called by the end of 2024. The Conservatives trail between 15 and 20 points behind Labour in opinion polls — a gap that has barely moved during Sunak’s year in office.
The latest Israel-Hamas conflict, now in its third week, and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, have added to Sunak's challenges.
“I know this year has been tough,” Sunak said in a message marking the anniversary. “And there is still work to be done to help hardworking families across the country, but I’m proud of the steps we’ve made.”
A little over a year ago, Sunak thought he had lost his chance to be prime minister. In September 2022 he lost a Conservative leadership contest to Liz Truss, who took over as prime minister from the scandal-dogged Boris Johnson.
Then, Truss announced a budget that included billions in uncosted tax cuts and spooked the financial markets. The value of the pound plunged, the cost of government borrowing soared — and Truss announced her resignation after just six weeks in office. The party chose Sunak to replace her, and he became Britain's third prime minister of the year.
“Some mistakes were made,” Sunak said diplomatically as he stood outside 10 Downing St. on Oct. 25, 2022. “And I have been elected as leader of my party and your prime minister, in part, to fix them.”
He promised his government would “have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.”
The markets calmed, and Sunak managed to patch up relations with the European Union, which had frayed during Britain’s testy divorce from the bloc.
He announced five goals for his government, including halving inflation, which peaked at 11.1% in late 2022, getting the economy growing, reducing a health care backlog and curbing the number of migrants reaching Britain across the English Channel in small boats.
There has been some progress – inflation was 6.7% in September and the economy is growing, albeit only by about 0.5% on the year. But the health system remains overburdened, the government’s plans to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda as a deterrent is mired in the courts, and millions of people in Britain are still struggling to pay their bills.
Sunak has fought back by trying to reinvent himself as a shake-things-up populist. He announced he was slowing moves to phase out fossil fuels in order to save taxpayers money, curtailed an overbudget high-speed railway project and announced plans to effectively ban smoking for the next generation with a gradual ban on buying cigarettes.
He told delegates at the Conservative conference this month that he was making “long-term decisions for a better future,” but to critics it just looked like an incoherent hodgepodge of policies.
Former Conservative lawmaker Justine Greening said Sunak’s talk of “breaking the political consensus and challenging the status quo” sounded more like Truss than the “sensible, pragmatic” politician who steadied the ship after his disruptive predecessor.
“Whether inside or outside the party, Sunak’s sudden reincarnation as ‘Liz lite’ has left nobody happy,” Greening wrote in The Guardian.
Two disastrous byelection results last week deepened the gloom. The Conservatives lost two seats in Parliament that they had held for years by large margins, as voters switched in droves to Labour.
For now, the grumbling among Conservatives is muted. Few want to risk ousting yet another leader before an election.
Sunak is not giving up. His office released a snappy video touting the achievements of the past year and telling viewers to “watch this space” for more wins. The government’s plans for the next year will be set out by King Charles III at the State Opening of Parliament on Nov. 7.
Spokesman Max Blain said Sunak is “focused on delivering for the public rather than marking an anniversary.”
