Rishi Sunak today revealed a new enemy that he’s defining himself against: ‘the 30-year status quo’. Why this period? Because it includes Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Boris. Sunak wants to lump them together as a melange that includes Starmer. This was the crux of his speech today: to cast himself as the candidate of change and Keir Starmer as the custodian of the ‘old consensus’. This is plausible and has lots more potential: after his net zero and HS2 announcements, today was the chance to follow-up.
All told, it was a decent speech but one in which the ghost of Jacinda Ardern loomed larger than that of Thatcher
In his speech, Sunak fleshed out his original thesis: that it’s time to think about trade-offs. Instead of banking the £36 billion of savings from HS2, it would be spent on a plethora of far more needed projects: a Shipley bypass, 70 road schemes, bringing back the Don Valley line, doing up the A2, A5, and M6. This is what David Cameron should have done in 2012 when it became clear that the HS2 business case had collapsed. Simple embarrassment about admitting to this disaster meant it staggered on, undead, for a decade. It’s the same with net zero pledges like the 2030 petrol car-sale ban that was never plausible, but also undead. Sunak has finally taken some dragonglass to these White Walkers.
So what would be next? Welfare reform? Announcing a commission to review the future of the NHS, as suggested by Sajid Javid? Not really. Instead, Britain will become the only country in the world to follow Jacinda Ardern’s radical ‘lifetime ban’ on cigarettes to those born after 2009, and the government will consider scrapping A Levels. Both radical talking points but not, I don’t think, tackling the ‘old consensus’. Both would also need him to be re-elected and bookmakers say the chance of this happening next year is 20 per cent.
The cigarette plan means Alex, my 15-year-old, will be able to buy cigarettes all his life. Dominic, his 13-year-old brother, will not. When they are pensioners, and if Dom smokes, he’ll be getting ID’d and asking Alex, 66, to buy fags for him when he’s 64.
Of course, neither of them are likely to smoke. The young are giving up on cigarettes already – a government ban was not necessary. If it’s not necessary to ban then it’s necessary not to ban: that would be the Burkean, conservative way. So this sits ill with the rest of the Sunak agenda and ‘good conservative common sense’ he was defending earlier on in his speech. I suspect it was inspired more by Wes Streeting saying that a Labour government might do this. Is this shooting your opponent’s fox, or adopting their agenda? Before this speech, I’d have said that Sunak is a liberal. I’m not quite so sure that I’d say that now.
I can see the case for A-Level reform and share concerns about it being too narrow. But the Tomlinson report under Blair showed this is a ten-year project and one that’s so big, with such long-term consequences, that it would need to be done either with cross-party consensus or by a government with a big majority. As we say in the leading article for the new magazine (out tomorrow) Sunak’s plan for an Advanced British Standard would best be seen as a conversation starter.
I loved his line about being ‘proud to be the first Asian PM and even prouder that it’s just not a big deal’. In general, he succeeded in positioning himself as a man of energy – even though, now, some of his new targets are a bit perplexing. To me, welfare was – and remains – the obvious segue. I’m writing this in Manchester, a booming city desperate for workers, where some 18 per cent are on out-of-work benefits. Yet this is the scandal that, still, no one wants to talk about.
All told, it was a decent speech but one in which the ghost of Jacinda Ardern loomed larger than that of Thatcher. Welfare reform is the natural segue to HS2 and net-zero reform. With that, he really would have momentum. That might be picked up in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping.
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