Purpose and authenticity matter in politics. People need to know who you are and what you stand for.
It’s true for political parties, and it’s especially true for their leaders. The Conservative party’s disastrous byelection results in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire show an electorate that doesn’t know what the party and its leader now represent.
Many Conservative activists in last year’s leadership contest supported Rishi Sunak because he pitched himself as the sensible, pragmatic candidate. Sunak was the ex-City banker who would bring his natural technocratic approach to running Britain. Many people felt that a dose of competent, well-managed Conservative government was just what was needed. In his first months in office, there had been much made of “steadying the ship” after the turbulent if short-lived Truss premiership.
It’s why it was all the more surprising and ill-judged that, with his Conservative conference speech earlier this month, Sunak sought to reinvent himself and turn that original persona on its head.
The strategy of “let Rishi be Rishi” unleashed a new version of the prime minister. Having steadied the ship, he bizarrely tacked back towards the very element of the party that had so comprehensively failed only a year before. He talked much more like Truss mark two, with an emphasis on breaking the political consensus and challenging the status quo. Yet there was no comparable plan to match the rhetoric. He argued there had been 30 years of failing, broken political consensus, but his policies on smoking and education were the kind his predecessors could have easily announced themselves. It was a mismatch of epic proportions.
Before conference, whatever voters’ misgivings about the Conservative party, they at least knew who Sunak was. After the conference, they don’t even know that – as Thursday’s byelection results showed. As the former chancellor George Osborne quite rightly described, the consequence of this personality pivot is electoral “armageddon”. Whether inside or outside the party, Sunak’s sudden reincarnation as “Liz lite” has left nobody happy.
It feels as if there isn’t the energy or appetite to challenge the right wing of the party. Moderate MPs who originally supported the “sensible” Sunak candidacy now see the chances of any possible victory as vanishingly small. They are demoralised and exhausted by the political rollercoaster of recent years, and often staring down the barrel of personal defeat at the next general election. Leading MPs on the right, meanwhile, seem much more interested in winning the battle for who leads the party in opposition, rather than having the discipline to unite behind the prime minister.
So, where next for the Conservatives? Sunak should recognise that his conference reset badly failed. In adopting the hard right’s rhetoric, he’s ended up with their results, too – rejection by a broader country. “Let Rishi be Rishi” was always a simplistic falsehood. Voters already have a clear view of who Sunak is from his time as chancellor and now prime minister. It was both unwise and confusing to suggest to them he is someone else than he actually is. It means he is no longer authentic in an era when authenticity counts for everything.
Many in the Conservative party leadership would denigrate Keir Starmer for lacking the charisma of Tony Blair. With his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the Labour leadership may be accused of being dull in comparison to the heady years of Cool Britannia and New Labour, but it’s working because it’s authentic – and, as last week’s byelections showed, Labour is getting New Labour-style pre-1997 landslide election results.
The only path to success or mitigated failure – whichever it turns out to be – is for Sunak to lead the Conservatives back to the centre ground. He must appeal to the mainstream voters, as David Cameron successfully did after the party’s years in opposition.
He has to be himself. He is not the change candidate. No amount of saying it will make it true. He is not the end of 30 years of political chumminess; to many people, he is the embodiment of it.
In today’s Britain, centre-ground politics does not mean watered-down compromise or a lesser ambition for the country. In fact, there is a hunger for significant change– for Britain to become a more open, fairer society. There is plenty of appetite to challenge the status quo. For those who I campaign with across the country on social mobility, we have a simple but powerful ambition for Britain: to transform it into a country that has equality of opportunity for the first time. There’s nothing “watered down” about seeking to be a generation that finally reshapes fairer opportunity for all, irrespective of background or circumstance.
Sunak channelled Margaret Thatcher at conference, but perhaps a “full Major” strategy is his only hope – in other words, attempting to turn what looks like a repeat of the 1997 landslide loss into John Major’s narrow victory in 1992. But to do even that, he must authentically share that mission that voters care about, and deliver on it while keeping a steady hand on the tiller. Few have given a more passionate advocacy of social mobility than Major, turning the story of his own background growing up in poverty into one of political success. It’s a tall order for Sunak. But if the “let Rishi be Rishi” strategy has failed, perhaps it’s time to let Rishi be John.
Justine Greening is a former Conservative minister, and founder of the Purpose Coalition and Social Mobility Pledge
