A surging Sunak takes on a revived Boris
Sunak’s warnings during the leadership race that Truss’s borrowing-led plan was a “fairytale” have largely borne out
After former finance minister Rishi Sunak resigned in September, bringing about the ouster of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it looked all but guaranteed that the former would become the new British premier and the latter, owing to his many scandals, would lead a life outside of public politics.
But Liz Truss won the ensuing Conservative Party leadership race. And 45 days after her appointment, the UK is set to get its third prime minister in three months.
Truss’s fall was so dramatic that it was very nearly reminiscent of the fall of Johnson. In hindsight, it was clear the “wooden speaker” and “Thatcher acolyte” was never a good choice to begin with.
The former foreign minister was presumably chosen by party members in the hope that her long career in government could help lead the country out of its worst cost of living crisis in decades, several diplomatic challenges, and a government plagued by scandal.
But Truss’s economic strategy led to a market disaster, the resignation of her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng, and a U-turn so dramatic that it was difficult to tell what the prime minister stood for.
Sunak’s warnings during the leadership race that Truss’s borrowing-led plan was a “fairytale” have largely borne out.
“We cannot make it worse, inflation is the enemy that makes everybody poorer,” Sunak had said. “We have to be honest. Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan - it’s a fairytale.”
The fact that he appears to have been right alone could make Sunak an attractive choice.
But the key here is that the party will pick its new leader with an eye on the general election set for 2025 and all the local polls in between: under Truss, the Labour Party was able to secure a 36-point lead over the Tory Party if an election was held immediately. For the party, this means the selection of the next prime minister will also decide its future.
An immigrant’s story
Sunak, 42, was born in Southampton, southern England, to parents Yashvir, a general practitioner, and Usha Sunak, a pharmacist. Although both his parents were born in East Africa, they are of Indian origin.
“British Indian is what I tick on the census, we have a category for it. I am thoroughly British, this is my home and my country, but my religious and cultural heritage is Indian, my wife is Indian. I am open about being a Hindu,” he told Business Standard in a 2020 interview.
Sunak has long emphasised on his heritage as the son of humble immigrants.
But critics have used the chancellor’s privileged upbringing as him being out of touch with the concerns of the ordinary people.
The Sunday Times said Sunak became a “multimillionaire in his mid-twenties”. His wife Akshata Murthy — daughter of Infosys founder Narayan Murthy — and he became the 222nd wealthiest people in the UK in 2022 with a combined wealth of £730 million.
As opposed to Truss, who has questionable success in public speaking, the articulate and well-tailored Sunak certainly has a better temperament to be the face of the party and the country. His Covid briefings are said to have imbued a sense of confidence in the public. And while Truss has recently turned to Brexit, Sunak has won favour by backing the leave EU campaign from the beginning.
He has also consistently held a tough stance on immigration into the UK. Theoretically, he also supports low taxes and reduced government involvement in the economy, even though his most popular move is the furlough scheme which protected millions of jobs during the pandemic with the government paying people’s wages.
If Sunak wins, he will be Britain’s second prime minister from an ethnic minority ever. Former PM Benjamin Disraeli, of Jewish descent, held office between February 27, 1868 and December 1, 1868, and a longer term between 1874 and 1880.
But there may be some doubts among Tory Party members.
Some have questioned his loyalty, blaming him for the rebellion that ended Johnson’s premiership, while others believe that under him, the party will not be able to defeat the Labour Party in the next general election.
It does not help that he was the first chancellor to be fined for breaking the rules by attending parties at 10, Downing Street — the prime minister’s official residence — during a Covid-induced lockdown.
The prodigal premier
Johnson, 53, is known for a lot of things, but mostly for the scandals and quirks: The ‘Partygate’ scandal that led to the downfall of his government; his unruly hair; the times he was fired from his job as a journalist because he made up quotes; and most of all as the prime minister who finally got “Brexit done”.
The chance of his return has caused fissures within the party with senior party members on both sides of the issue.
At the heart of the discontent that eventually led to his resignation were the parties at the prime minister’s residence held at a time when Britons were under a harsh lockdown due to a devastating Covid wave.
In the immediate aftermath, Johnson became the first sitting PM to be fined by the police for breaking the law, his office become the country’s most fined address after 126 penalties were issued to 83 people.
In a subsequent report on the scandal, civil servant Sue Gray blamed the top leadership for the unruly behaviour.
Johnson is under investigation for misleading the Parliament over ‘Partygate’.
“This isn’t the time for Boris’s style,” senior lawmaker Steve Baker told Sky News. “I’m afraid the trouble is because of the privileges vote, Boris would be a guaranteed disaster.”
Even his crowning achievement, the Brexit deal, has been a diplomatic disaster for the British government.
Under Johnson, despite the initial agreement, Britain has been backtracking on the Northern Ireland protocol, which has led to rifts with its Irish neighbour, the European Union, and as far as the US.
Despite all the controversies, however, Johnson won the Conservative Party a massive 80-seat general election victory on a single-issue promise to “Get Brexit Done” and despite electoral setbacks since, some Tory members wonder if he is the only one who has a mandate from the British public.
Former interior minister Priti Patel said Johnson had “the mandate to deliver our elected manifesto and a proven track record getting the big decisions right”. This is especially relevant amid gowning unease among the general public over the repeated change in prime ministers without their say.
Johnson is also reportedly more popular among the grassroots party members than Sunak, who in the previous leadership race lost to Truss over exactly this reason.
The third candidate is the much less-known Penny Mordaunt, 49, with the declared backing of 23 lawmakers.
The cabinet member and ex-navy reservist, the first one to announce her candidacy, missed out the run-offs to replace Johnson by just eight votes. She has said she can unite the Conservative Party, saying she was “a halfway house between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak”. She has yet to detail her tax policy, but suggested that current finance minister Jeremy Hunt would continue if she won the race.
“I deeply regret that the debate now is about ‘are you for stability or low taxes’,” she said in an interview. “That’s not the right construct. There are two sides of the same coin. You have to have stability in order to deliver low taxes and you have to have low taxes in order to grow the economy and create that stability.”
“That is what I am standing for. That is why I think I’m best placed to unite our party.”
According to a YouGov poll published on Friday, the general public believes that Sunak (46%) will do a much better job as prime minister than Johnson (34%) and Mordaunt (26%).
But there is no clarity if Tory members will be following the polls, given that last time, Truss was a heavily unpopular choice among the public. One thing is clear, the party has a massive task ahead if they want to guarantee that the next prime minister doesn’t signal an end to 12 years of Conservative Party rule.
The process
The chairman of the 1922 Committee of the Conservative Party, Graham Brady, said on Friday that the new leader will be chosen on October 28, with the whole process lasting only a week, unlike like the last time when it took over a month.
The nomination process was opened on Friday and will close on Monday at 6:30pm (IST), with each member having to show the support of at least 100 MPs to secure their candidacy.
If only one member manages to cross that threshold, they automatically get elected. If, on the other hand, more than one member is able to fulfil the requirement, then Conservative MPs will vote between the candidates.
Since there 357 Tory MPs, there can only be a maximum of three candidates and after the vote, the one with the lowest votes will be eliminated. This will take place between 8:00pm and 10:00pm, and the result will be announced a half hour later (10:30 pm) on Monday itself.
The last two candidates will be voted for by MPs: this will be an indicative vote (11:00am-1:00 am), to show who has more support. The result will be announced at 1:30am on Tuesday.
If no one withdraws after the vote, it will be followed by an online vote among the party’s 170,000 grassroots members. Before the voting closes, the two candidates will also take part in a TV debate and the new winner will be announced on Friday.
So far, it appears that both Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have acquired the requisite support to formalise their candidacy. While Johnson has not formally announced his intention to run, Sunak on Sunday confirmed that he would run for prime minister.
“I want to fix our economy, unite our party and deliver for our country,” Sunak said in a tweet on Sunday.
He crossed the threshold on Friday itself, even before he had announced his intention to run, with at least 129 lawmakers backing him on Sunday.
Johnson, on the other hand, publicly only has the backing of 53 lawmakers, including former home secretary Priti Patel, but his camp has claimed that he has already crossed the threshold of support.
Mordaunt has only been able to garner 23 supporters.
