When Rishi Sunak was prime minister, he often appeared merely to be commentating on events, rather than in charge of them. Perhaps that is why he looks so comfortable as leader of the opposition now. He has been giving very good speeches since losing the election, and both he and his party look rather relieved to be out of government. They are currently in the opposition honeymoon period, before the reality of no-one being interested in what you have to say really hits.
Sunak’s response to the King’s Speech today was generous and thoughtful. It included some amusing jokes, including his advice to the rising stars on the opposite benches: ‘Life comes at you fast. Soon you might be fortunate enough to be tapped on the shoulder and offered a junior ministerial role. Then you’ll find yourself attending cabinet, then in the cabinet. And then when the prime minister’s position becomes untenable, you might end up being called to the highest office, and before you know it, you have a bright future behind you. And you were left wondering whether you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44.’
He promised that the Conservatives would take their job as the official opposition seriously, saying they would be guided by their principles of sound public finances and the belief that people know how to spend their own money better than governments do. He also pushed Starmer to commit to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030, something the Conservatives pledged in the run-up to the election, having previously had the same ‘when circumstances allow’ formulation as Labour. Sunak also said Starmer needed to offer an alternative to the Rwanda deterrent, which he has scrapped, otherwise ‘the country will end up having to accept that a large number of those who crossed the Channel illegally will end up remaining here’.
Sunak won’t be leader of the opposition for much longer, even if the Conservatives do go for a much longer leadership contest. But whoever takes over from him will have a tough job in combating the claim by Labour that when they came into government, things were much worse than they thought. Today, he took issue with that claim, saying the work of the Office for Budget Responsibility ‘means the party opposite did have the full details of the public finances when they set out their manifesto’. Some of his colleagues have also been trying to argue that Labour has also inherited a strong economic legacy from the Conservatives. This King’s Speech has been as much about baking in the narrative that the Tories broke everything: it’s going to take a very good opposition leader to combat that.
Comments