It was preposterous. A prime minister at the head of a party that’s been running the country for 13 years posed as a revolutionary today. Rishi Sunak presented himself to the Tory conference as a dashing anarchist, an upstart rebel, a fearless saviour who wants to wrest power from an authoritarian clique and hand it back to the people.
‘Our mission is to fundamentally change our country’, he cried. Evidently he’d forgotten that the Tories have been in office for the last decade-and-a-bit.
To the surprise of no one, he announced that HS2 will be scrapped. The Birmingham-to-Manchester leg is no more, he declared.
‘The right thing to do when the facts change is to have the courage to change direction.’
He pledged to spend ‘every penny’ of the leftover £36 billion on ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of new transport schemes. Mostly in the North. Roads, trams, by-passes and railways will all be built, he chirruped excitedly. The new golden era of infrastructure will include a link from Manchester to Hull, ‘fully electrified,’ he added, as if this were a recently patented innovation.
Those who mourn the loss of HS2 will be thrilled to learn that the Euston terminus will go ahead as planned. But Rishi has decided to appoint a superefficient new management team to oversee its construction. ‘For the first time in the life-cycle of this project,’ he said, ‘we will have cut costs.’ A bit more forgetfulness there. Did he not spend years as chancellor while the HS2 budget was spiralling out of control?
The chief innovation of his speech was to curtail the freedoms of teenagers. He revived the failed ‘war on drugs’ and widened its scope to include tobacco.
‘I propose that in future, we raise the smoking age by one year, every year.’
The chief innovation of his speech was to curtail the freedoms of teenagers
Rishi seems unaware that prohibition adds lustre to any human activity and makes it more attractive and glamorous. It’s possible that repeat offenders will end up in jail for puffing on a Silk Cut. He might be better advised to back off and let kids make their own mistakes.
He also wants to keep sixth formers in class for longer by forcing them to spend ‘at least 195 hours more with a teacher.’ What exquisitely painful news for school-leavers: more time wasted in school. Reluctant students are disruptive and hard to discipline, of course, and Rishi plans to boost the salaries of their hapless teachers as compensation. He announced tax-free bonuses of ‘£30,000 during the first five years of their careers’. If learning is so beneficial, why are bribes and laws needed to impose it?
And though he praised education as ‘a silver bullet’ he also attacked a significant part of the university system. He promised to scrap ‘rip-off degrees’, which he didn’t define. No degree can be considered a ‘rip-off’ if the customer is correctly informed about its content and the costs involved. The Prime Minister probably meant diplomas that feature very little academic content but such courses attract vast numbers of foreign students who want a qualification from the UK and don’t care what subject is being offered. He failed to explain how ‘a rip-off degree’ could be expressed in law.
There was more forgetfulness when it came to channel crossings.
‘Know this’, he said sternly: ‘I will do whatever is necessary to stop the boats.’
That pledge had a rather elderly ring to it. He went on to boast that the number of crossings has dropped ‘by 20 per cent.’ Fair enough. Then came another bout of amnesia. He said that the business model of the people-smugglers would be smashed ‘once flights start going regularly to Rwanda.’
‘Regularly?’ He sounded as if the removals were already taking place – but not frequently enough.
If his aim was to deliver a speech that will soon be forgotten, this was a triumph.
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