Rishi Sunak’s resignation speech was classy, generous and a model of the British system at its best. He started by taking personal responsibility for the election disaster, saying (as expected) that he’d resign as party leader as well as prime minister. His next move was not back into No. 10 but into the car and to Buckingham Palace to ask the King to accept his resignation and recommend that he appoints Keir Starmer. The contrast to America’s last change of power is striking.
It’s time to learn the lessons of the campaign, Sunak said. As he spoke, his wife stood in the background with an umbrella as if to illustrate the point. Sunak made the important point about how little fuss there was that a Hindu prime minister with his Indian wife should enter and exit No. 10 and be judged on exactly the same basis as anyone else: competence and quality of government. He saluted ‘the vision of kindness, decency and tolerance that has always been the British way’ and a vision which his family has embodied in No. 10. He said he’d stay on as leader until his party sorts itself out and focuses on the important task of providing serious opposition.
The contrast to America’s last change of power is striking
‘His successors will be all our successes,’ he said of Starmer – a hint that the falling net migration and NHS waiting lists that will mark Labour’s first year is due to Tory reforms. ‘He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door, and as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world.’
Then, Sunak unwittingly reminded us why he had lost. He claimed credit for reducing an inflation that was anyway predicted to fall. ‘Mortgages are falling’ he said: flatly untrue, they have been rising for months. ‘Growth has returned’ – not really. Not to speak of. Fighting a campaign saying stuff that isn’t really true was the main Tory strategy and it didn’t work. When it comes to learning lessons, the importance of the truth is one of them. Another one will be the futility of saying ‘it’s me or the awful other guy’. In this election, voters rejected this choice and flocked to protest parties so they can say – in their millions – ‘none of the above’.
The last time Sunak saw the King was to ask for the dissolution of parliament before he had consulted his cabinet. That was deeply unconventional; the wrong way around, it meant there was division from the start. But when it came to an exit, Sunak played the role perfectly.
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