A few days before Britain’s Conservative Party suffered a major setback in Thursday’s local elections, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recorded a short video to promote some good news from his government. In it eight second clipSunak poured milk from a half-litre bottle into a tall glass, filled with a dark, steaming drink and with the figure of £900 scrawled on the side.
“Payday is coming,” Sunak posted, referring to the savings an average earner would supposedly make from a cut in mandatory contributions to Britain’s national insurance system.
Soon the teasing began. Some said she had added too much milk. His numbers didn’t add up, others said. And why, one critic asked, would Sunak choose a half-litre bottle as a prop days after opposition Labor Party deputy leader Angela Rayner had criticized him in Parliament as a “pint-sized loser”?
However partisan his comment may be, “loser” is a label that Sunak is finding increasingly difficult to shake off, even among members of his own party. In the 18 months since he took over from her failed predecessor Liz Truss, Sunak, 43, has lost seven consecutive special parliamentary elections and local elections.
Last week’s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost about 40 percent of the 985 seats they were defending, were simply the latest sign of what analysts say is a path toward a crushing defeat in a general election. National polls show Labor leading the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points, a persistent gap that the prime minister has been unable to close.
The drumbeat of bad news is bringing fresh scrutiny to Sunak’s leadership and the future of his party, which has been in power for 14 years but faces what could be a long period in the political wilderness.
For now, Sunak appears to have quelled talk that a cabal of Conservative lawmakers would try to unseat him before the vote, expected in the fall. The local results, although bad, were not as catastrophic as they could have been, avoiding total panic among his colleagues. Having had three prime ministers since the last election, the Conservatives are also running out of alternative leaders.
Embattled as he is, Sunak is likely to limp into the general election as the standard bearer of an exhausted and divided party.
“The broader view is that it is probably best now to let Rishi stay in his job and absorb the defeat, and for his successors to position themselves for what happens after Labor wins in a landslide,” said Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist at the University of Kent, which has advised the Conservative Party.
Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and an expert on the Conservatives, said: “He looks like a walking dead man to be honest.”
Sunak’s defenders say he is a victim of the economic headwinds arising from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the poisoned legacy he inherited from Truss, whose sweeping tax cut plan spooked financial markets and tarnished his reputation for probity. prosecutor of Great Britain. .
Britain’s persistent inflation, high mortgage rates and a stagnant economy predate Sunak. The inflation rate has fallen to 3.2 per cent from 11.1 per cent when he took office, although credit for that goes mainly to the Bank of England.
Sunak was praised for stabilizing markets and restoring Britain’s credibility after Truss. But critics said he never followed that with a compelling strategy to recharge growth. He also failed to deliver on two other promises: reducing waiting times at the National Health Service and stopping small boats transporting asylum seekers across the English Channel.
“Liz Truss destroyed the party’s reputation for economic competence,” Professor Bale said. “But she’s also Sunak’s fault – she doesn’t have the command, charisma or authority that someone carrying out the required rescue work would have needed.”
Part of that, critics said, reflects Sunak’s political shortcomings. He can be whiny in media interviews and his attempts to connect with voters often prove fruitless. He drew ridicule after posing in a pair of Adidas Sambas, a sneaker favored by celebrities including Rihanna and Harry Styles, while promoting his tax policies. “Sunak took an eternally great sneaker and ruined it for everyone,” said British magazine GQ.
Some say Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose wife, Akshata Murthy, is the daughter of an Indian tech billionaire, is simply not an identifiable figure. Before he was mocked for wearing Sambas, he was criticized for wearing £490 ($616) Prada suede loafers on a construction site.
Labor Party leader Keir Starmer has taken aim at Sunak’s preference for flying across Britain rather than taking the train. “I’m sure from the vantage point of your helicopter everything might look fine,” Starmer said in Parliament, “but that’s not the lived experience of those on the ground.”
Sunak once posed with a “smart mug” for coffee, which sells for £180, on his desk, an image that stuck in the minds of those who criticized his video of him pouring milk. “If anyone can afford a £900 cup of tea, it’s the Prime Minister,” journalist Robert Hutton wrote on social media.
Others pointed out that Mr Sunak’s claim that workers would save £900 in lower National Insurance payments It was misleading, because the government had frozen the income tax thresholds. With wages adjusted for inflation, people pay higher taxes without taking home extra money.
Sunak did not spend much time in the political trenches before becoming prime minister. He entered Parliament in 2015 and in just five years rose to Chancellor of the Exchequer during Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. After helping to precipitate Mr Johnson’s downfall, Ms Truss defeated him in his first leadership contest.
However bumpy his tenure has been, Sunak insists his government has made progress on the economy, immigration and defence, promising to increase Britain’s military spending to 2.5 per cent of economic output by 2030.
In an article published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, Sunak drew a sharp distinction between the Conservatives and Labour. Voters, he said, could choose between “a plan or no plan, bold, principled action versus U-turns and evasions, a clear record of compliance versus political gamesmanship.”
Nowhere has Sunak invested more political capital than in immigration. He won passage of a divisive law that would put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda, and is now promising to put planes in the air in July, before the election.
Rwanda’s policy, which involves permanently deporting asylum seekers without hearing their asylum claims, is anathema to human rights activists, constitutional lawyers and the courts. But it is popular with grassroots Conservatives, calculated to win over the same voters in the Midlands and northern England who turned against the Conservatives in local elections.
Traditionally, these areas had been Labor strongholds, earning the nickname “red wall” after the party’s campaign colour. But they swung towards the Conservatives in 2019 because of Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done.” Now, the coalition he cobbled together appears to be fracturing; The red wall is returning to the Labor Party.
Consider Blackpool South, a coastal district in the north, where Labor won a Conservative-held seat in a special election on Thursday. In 2016, the Blackpool region voted in favor of Brexit with 67.5 per cent.
Professor Goodman blamed the Conservatives for not acting more aggressively to reduce immigration. These results, he said, “underscore how much they have lost touch with the post-Brexit political realignment.”
For other analysts, however, Sunak’s struggles are evidence that this realignment was always something of a mirage. In the Conservative Party’s heartland in the south – known as the “blue wall” – voters want low taxes and a stable government. Some dislike the anti-immigrant tone of Rwandan politics.
These more free market and socially liberal priorities are often at odds with what many voters in the Midlands and North want. And that has confronted Sunak with a dilemma, the political equivalent of squaring the circle.
“You’re being asked to pursue two different strategies at the same time,” said Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and polling expert. “Dealing with the blue wall on one side and the red wall on the other. And it is not easy to identify a common strategy that addresses both.”
Stephen’s Castle contributed with reports.