When King Charles asks him to form a government this morning, Rishi Sunak will become Britain’s second ethnic minority prime minister after Benjamin Disraeli, more than 140 years ago. He is the first British Indian prime minister and, as a Hindu, the first to practice a faith other than Christianity.
In Brent, north-west London, the area’s sizeable Hindu community felt pride at that landmark news as they celebrated Diwali on Monday, Zaina Alibhai reports: “He’ll be writing history,” said 47-year-old Deepa Nayar. At the same time, writes Marcus Ryder, there should be scepticism about the idea of “trickle-down diversity”: the idea that people of colour in positions of power will automatically bring positive change.
What kind of change Sunak intends to bring remains remarkably unclear. “He had a pretty comprehensive programme in the summer,” said Rowena Mason. “But the landscape is so different now. And everyone is in the dark about what he plans, other than a very small campaign team around him.”
For more on the dizzying speed of the reversal in Sunak’s political fortunes, see this piece by Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar. Here’s what we do know about what Rishi Sunak’s government might look like.
Policy: Tax rises likely, spending cuts inevitable
Sunak will make his first full speech as prime minister in Downing Street this morning. In his wooden public remarks yesterday, Sunak – using that familiar ‘reassuring daytime infomercial for funeral insurance’ tone that was briefly absent from the public arena – acknowledged the gravity of the circumstances, saying: “There is no doubt we face a profound economic challenge.”
How he will begin to respond to that challenge will be made clear next Monday, when Jeremy Hunt is expected to go ahead with a scheduled fiscal statement that will seek to mitigate the impact of the Liz Truss era – if, as seems likely, Sunak keeps him in place. Polly Toynbee writes that the outcome will be more painful than the last round of austerity, and is a matter of political choice.
“He won’t reverse the decision to scrap the national insurance rise, and he’s likely to raise other taxes,” Rowena said. “There will be tough decisions on uprating benefits and other cuts to public services. He’s unlikely to pledge to spend 3% of GDP on defence, which is important to a lot of Tory MPs.” Sunak is likely to maintain the energy price guarantee until April “but he will think about a more targeted approach after that”, just as Truss eventually signalled.
What else? Sunak said almost nothing during the leadership contest, other than a boilerplate tweeted announcement of his candidacy featuring a theoretical commitment to the 2019 manifesto. He has promised to honour net zero pledges but has appeared less committed on the climate crisis than Boris Johnson. His policy prescription for the creaking NHS in the summer was limited to fines for patients who miss appointments. Otherwise, apart from the continuation of Ukraine policy and hopes of a thaw with the EU over Northern Ireland, “we don’t really know what he thinks about almost anything other than the economy,” Rowena said.
“He’s only been in parliament seven years. He hasn’t spoken about very much else. But the clear indications [as Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConservativeHome, writes here] are that he’s very right-wing, and we shouldn’t expect him to be a centrist just because of tone or because he’s not Liz Truss. Pro-City, pro-deregulation, pro-fiscal discipline, with a side order of tax cuts if possible – that’s the closest thing to Sunakism at the moment.”
Politics: Exhausted Tories are likely to back him – for now
If Sunak’s message to the public was sombre, his words to his own MPs were a little more colourful, Jessica Elgot reports: “Unite or die.” Those listening, many of whom are desperate for an end to the psychodramas, appear to have been mostly receptive: one Mordaunt supporter called it “the best leadership speech I have ever heard”.
“There is a small, very vocal rump, people like Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but they’re people he can do without, and the rest of the party is behind him,” said Rowena. “To maintain that, he’s going to have to balance his cabinet between all wings of the party in a way that Johnson and Truss didn’t.” This piece runs through some of the beneficiaries: let’s hope the government IT service has a new plan for Suella Braverman’s emails.
Ultimately, the self-interest of backbenchers staring down the barrel of electoral annihilation will ensure discipline if he gets a meaningful polling bounce. “He starts from such a low point that he has the chance to make progress,” Rowena said. “If that doesn’t happen, backbenchers will start to offer their own prescriptions. And that’s how party unity disappears.” As Aubrey Allegretti explains here, “it is easy to over-read the immediate public displays of loyalty as something resembling a lasting peace”.
Tone: Stability
Sunak’s obvious opportunity is to draw a contrast with the havoc of the last two incumbents. “It was evident in that Twitter statement,” Rowena said. Sunak promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government”, and said he would “work day in and day out to get the job done.”
“It is one of his greatest assets that he comes across as someone who has a grip on things,” Rowena added. “He will talk about stability, and he’s not going to be making a lot of jokes.”
The fact of his ethnicity and faith, meanwhile, “is important to him – he’s not the kind of politician who denies how central that is to who he is. And he’s done work in his past life at a thinktank on how important diverse communities are to the success of political parties. He doesn’t dismiss it.”
Vulnerabilities: The 0.01%
“After the Ed Miliband years, there was a bit of a perception within Labour that attacks on David Cameron over privilege made it harder to land arguments about being a party of aspiration,” Rowena said. “But Sunak looks like a very different case.”
Almost nobody will view a politician with a fortune of £730m as a plausibly aspirational figure. “And that chimes with these little slips that have made him look like he lives this rarefied, out-of-touch life.” Some of those slips are enumerated here; for more on the political complications of his wealth, see this piece by Rupert Neate.
His wife’s non-dom status – allowing her to avoid UK tax on the £11.6m annual dividends from her father’s software company – and Sunak’s maintenance of a US green card even when he was chancellor, were the basis of his greatest political weakness in the past. (Caroline Davies has more on his family.) “The question is how hard Labour want to go on that,” Rowena said. “He’s going to be a member of the 0.01% enacting austerity and telling people they have to suck up a lower standard of living.”
Though the country might feel relief today, that does not sound like a recipe for popularity. The Conservative desire for self-preservation, and the simple fact he is not Johnson or Truss, will take Sunak some distance – but that is very far from being enough.
