Little over a year ago, when Sky News’s Beth Rigby asked Rishi Sunak what it felt like to lose, he didn’t know what to say.
It’s a question he will have the chance to ponder as the leader of the opposition over the next three months. Day in, day out, Sunak will be tasked with holding accountable a party and prime minister who defeated him resoundingly in July’s election.
When he hands over to his successor on 2 November after an extended Conservative leadership contest, Sunak will have been leader of the opposition for 121 days, longer than any defeated prime minister since James Callaghan lost in 1979, according to analysis for the Guardian by the Institute for Government.
In the decades since Callaghan, prime ministers and opposition leaders have tended to exit swiftly after defeat. John Major held the fort for 49 days after Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband both departed immediately after losing elections, both times handing over temporarily to Harriet Harman. The prevailing view has been that leaders lack the authority to remain in post after being rejected by the electorate.
The timeline for electing the next Conservative leader was a compromise born out of robust internal disagreements. Some senior party figures, including Sunak, initially pushed for a speedy contest to anoint a new leader by September. Others wanted a much longer process, with one senior figure even floating the suggestion of installing an interim leader for two years.
Those who wanted a quick resolution argued that the spectacle of the Conservatives tearing each other apart for four months would damage their party further, allowing Labour to set the narrative and Nigel Farage to position himself as the main opposition. They likened it to David Cameron and George Osborne’s successful framing of Brown’s economic legacy in 2010, while Labour was occupied with choosing his successor. On top of that, there are concerns that the protracted contest will drain the Conservative party’s already depleted finances.
Those who pushed for a longer process – or who are ambivalent – say that no one is paying any attention anyway. “I think speculating that a longer or a shorter contest would be beneficial for the Conservatives is simply wrong,” said Paul Goodman, a Tory peer and former editor of ConservativeHome. “Most voters aren’t engaged so I’m not sure the length of the process makes as much difference as the advocates of both a shorter and a longer contest make out.”
Goodman said the Tory plan was a “realistic compromise in the circumstances” and akin to the process that took place after Michael Howard lost the 2005 election. That took more than five months, included a review of the party’s defeat, and resulted in the election of David Cameron – a relative outsider at the time who became prime minister five years later.
The best-case scenario for the Conservatives is that the 2024 leadership contest produces the next Cameron by giving a fresh-faced future winner the opportunity to appeal to MPs and party members. A longer process, according to its advocates, allows for a robust debate and offers a better chance of electing the right person. In the meantime, Sunak faces the difficult task of providing effective opposition to Labour and managing the party he has just led to a historic defeat.
Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University London and an expert on the Conservative party, said: “Anything Rishi Sunak says will effectively be written in the sand rather than in stone. On the one hand, that means that, conveniently for the Tories, whatever he says and does won’t bind his successor.
“On the other hand, it means he and the party won’t be taken very seriously, either by the government or Conservative colleagues and commentators.”
It will be a gruelling three months. Sunak will go head-to-head with Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions for several weeks and he will probably have to respond to Labour’s first budget, despite lacking the authority to make any substantive policy decisions. It’s a far cry from the idea that Sunak would immediately jet off to California, a suggestion that was repeatedly put to him during the campaign. For him, it’s a chance to demonstrate that he is loyal to his party and country – although what he does after November is still an open question.
