LORD ASHCROFT: Sunak has a race against time to prove the Tories aren't past ... trends now
Imagine an energetic new Prime Minister taking office at a time of huge domestic and international pressure.
Many people like his calm, businesslike approach to tackling the nation's ills – the result of seismic global events and his predecessors' blunders – and are willing to give him time to get to grips with them.
After all, he has a whole Parliament in which to sort things out.
This would be a fair description of Rishi Sunak's situation were it not for some rather crucial details: that he doesn't have a whole term to impress voters, merely something over a year; and that the four predecessors whom voters largely blame for the state of the country were all from his party.
In that sense, Sunak faces a race against time, on two fronts. One is the months left to turn things around and show Britain is on the right track; the other is the 13 years of Conservative-led government that voters will be considering as the next Election approaches.
Sunak faces a race against time, on two fronts. One is the months left to turn things around and show Britain is on the right track; the other is the 13 years of Conservative-led government that voters will be considering as the next Election approaches
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves his home in London on March 21. Boris Johnson's decision to stand down as an MP while railing against the committee investigating his alleged misleading of Parliament will arouse strong feelings among his supporters and detractors. Yet none of it changes the fundamentals: an administration apparently struggling to ease the day-to-day reality facing hard-pressed voters
My latest research has found a good deal of sympathy for Sunak's predicament, in the sense that the problems he faces are not of his making. But as people were only too ready to point out, just because something isn't the Government's fault doesn't mean it isn't its responsibility to solve.
The cost of living still tops the list of voters' concerns, but with an added twist of resentment as people start to see Covid and Ukraine as an excuse, not a reason, for high and rising prices.
I discovered people saying Labour would do a better job on nearly all policy areas, including traditionally Tory concerns such as crime and immigration, with net migration up and apparently slow progress on dealing with illegal cross-Channel small boats continuing to damage the Government.
As I noted in Going For Broke, my biography of Sunak, which I am updating, many see him as a diligent and committed politician doing his best to tackle things in a professional manner (though Red Wall voters in particular continue to see his personal wealth as a barrier to understanding their concerns. 'There's first-class rich and then there's private-jet rich,' as one put it). They also welcome a degree of stability and calm after the political rollercoaster of the Johnson-Truss years.
But in the five areas which Sunak defines as his tests for 2023 – cutting inflation, growing the economy, stopping migrants' boats, shrinking the debt and cutting NHS waiting lists – only a minority of those who voted Tory in 2019 (let alone the electorate as a whole) think much progress has been made.
Given time (that again!), some can see him taking effective action in all these areas. But they also see him having to cope with a seemingly unending parade of
