Rishi Sunak is reportedly unhappy as Prime Minister: I am not surprised. He is too shiny — possibly even too idealistic— to appreciate the novelistic possibilities of decline. It seems unlikely that he will be a successful Prime Minister — 13 years are stacked against him, alongside the furies of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — but he could be something almost as memorable, and infinitely more interesting: a noble failure. But he will have to be bold. Is it in his mathematician’s nature? Probably not, but he is Prime Minister now: he should fit the suit handed to him.
In a perfect metaphor for their shrinking ambition, the Tories govern for a tiny sector of society: the aged. This is the only constituency the Tories have stood by over four Parliaments, and they stand by the Tories in turn. If they can stand. Beyond this sunlit world of soaring house values, paid-off mortgages, and triple-locked pensions, is the rest of Britain with its dismal view of expensive, insecure and rare housing stock. The last time we met the current annual target of 300,000 new homes a year was 1976. I was two.
Whenever planning reform is suggested, Tories botch it due to the Nimby faction: the worst people on earth. Perhaps Nimbys haven’t seen the photographs of families in emergency accommodation slaked with mould because they are tending their flower gardens. Perhaps they don’t read the despair in tenants’ groups online. Changes to planning laws were decapitated last year by Home Counties Tory MPs — step out, Theresa Villiers of Chipping Barnet — whose affluent constituents love their views better than people.
As a Thatcherite, Sunak knows you cannot have successful economic units — also known as families —without secure housing. Insecure housing leads, tangentially, to anxiety, obesity, drug addiction, poor academic attainment, domestic violence, and intergenerational poverty: to welfare users, not taxpayers.
Labour knows this and will build over the greenbelt to house voters. Sunak should propose the legislation himself because it’s the right thing to do, and if you fail you should fail in a noble cause. His own backbenchers — the immoral ones, at least — will oppose him, but he can get it through with Labour’s help.
Sunak is an accidental Prime Minister, and he acts like one: a victim of events. His aged constituency will not be enough to get him over the line in 2024, and when they die their votes die with them. I am no Tory, but even I know it didn’t become the most successful political party in history by sitting in a bunker counting votes in Chipping Barnet.
A last stand on housing will help rebuild the party in the country, and it will annoy Johnson, who wants Sunak to fail as limply as possible, because Sunak brought him down.
I want to say to the PM: the leadership fell on your head like a surprise. Now lead.
Tanya Gold is a columnist
Phillips and Birbalsingh spat is off the mark
There was a Mean Girls-themed Twitter storm this weekend, slow to brew. When Tina Turner died, the conservative headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh tweeted a photograph of Turner with her abusive ex-husband Ike, captioned “good times”. Labour MP Jess Phillips mocked her on Twitter, insinuating that she did not care about domestic violence. Now, fresh from another outstanding Ofsted rating, Birbalsingh writes to Sir Keir Starmer, accusing Phillips of racism, and posts the letter on Twitter. “She holds me in contempt for being a black woman who does not bend the knee and consider her master,” Birbalsingh says. It’s an irresistible culture war spat but, as usual in these things, they are both wrong. Birbalsingh does not endorse domestic violence. Phillips does not hate women of colour. Phillips should not have tweeted; Birbalsingh should not have written. I suspect they want the same things, but they fell instead to hair-pulling. They should both go back to school.
