The length of time a party has been in power can equally make or break a premiership: it is far harder to make a mark coming to office at the end of a long period of dominance. Rishi Sunak is learning that lesson. Since last October he has been righting the listing Conservative ship. However, the losses his party suffered at the hands of opponents in May’s local elections have emboldened four distinct groups of critical voices within his party: former prime ministers; thwarted ex-ministers; the Tory right and ambitious frontbenchers jockeying to lead the party after Mr Sunak has gone. The prime minister looks as if he may be about to become as exercised by splits within his own party as by the challenge posed by the official opposition.
The prime minister could dismiss as symbolic Theresa May’s sit-in protest at the base of the throne in the House of Lords last week over the government’s new asylum bill. He might brush off former home secretary Priti Patel’s claim that Boris Johnson would win the next election as sour grapes. But Downing Street will be more concerned that the Tory right is still smarting over the implosion of the Truss regime. Its collapse interrupted political careers that cannot be resumed unless Mr Sunak’s grip on power is loosened.
A majority in parliament ought to mean Mr Sunak can take major decisions without taking the cabinet with him – relying instead on his own small inner circle in No 10. Yet it is the party in the country, one stuffed with councillors sullen from defeat, which looks like becoming a challenge to his authority. Party members look at the polls and want to see their passions being stirred for the fight ahead. The danger is that Mr Sunak seems to prefer book‑keeping to boosterism. His team have coalesced around the prime minister’s minimal programme, but with little enthusiasm.
What seems to exercise ambitious cabinet ministers is not the thought of running the state but pleasing the Conservative party’s core voters. That is why the home secretary, Suella Braverman, says migration ought to be going down whatever the cost to the country or why the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, says that the tax burden is too high. Instead of coming clean with the electorate that 13 years of Tory government has produced the opposite of what was promised, cabinet ministers are making their excuses.
Rishi Sunak is in power to clear up a mess that he helped create. Unfortunately for him realism does not play well in a party still gripped by Brexit fantasies. When the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, faced up to reality and told MPs she couldn’t abolish more than 4,000 EU laws – covering workers’ rights, environmental protection and food standards – by the end of the year as promised, the government’s actions were compared to the treachery of the medieval Borgias by her predecessor, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
With time running out, the Conservative party looks like it has nowhere else to turn. Most voters are confronted daily by rising housing and food costs, falling real wages and the parlous condition of public services – particularly the NHS. They would like to hear less about “radical left” fairy tales from those who think Tory politics part of a rightwing entertainment business. Mr Sunak’s problem is that he personifies the policies that left the country in such dire straits, rather than a departure from them.
