Wait until people realise,” said a Conservative MP, “how right-wing Rishi Sunak is and it will be very different.”
We won’t need to wait very long, because the Tory front-runner to succeed Boris Johnson is itching to slash public spending – starting with an imminent £20-a-week Universal Credit grab from five million working and job-working households.
Breaking a solemn pension rise promise in the Conservative election manifesto, after aid cuts which even his Cabinet colleagues concede will condemn the world’s wretched to death, are the actions of a Chancellor with a cold heart behind the cheesy smile.
Labour’s quandary is how much fire should be focused on limping Johnson and when to train the guns on the favourite to follow him, possibly before the next election.
Otherwise the Tories, a ruthless party of power, could go to the polls again posing as a rejuvenated force under new management, with a result to match Johnson replacing Theresa May for 2019.
International banker Sunak, another wealthy Conservative married to an heiress, is a Brexiteer who inflicted national self-harm with a policy daily revealed to be built on myths and lies.
The return of holiday mobile phone roaming charges won’t drain Sunak’s bank account but his public spending squeezes will throttle earnings and services.
My Tory critic of the Chancellor predicts that the wheels will come off of Sunak’s bandwagon when he starts slashing in earnest this summer.
Sunak increasing corporation tax 6% – echoing Labour policy that the Cons falsely claimed would cost the Exchequer and destroy businesses – certainly displayed political dexterity.
Yet the resurrection of freeports – adored by tax dodgers and smugglers, and sunk as undesirable by the ConDem coalition – betrays a rigid doctrinaire approach.
The Covid job-saving furlough scheme, imposed on the Treasury by the TUC, CBI and reality, was more successful than publicity-hungry Dishy Rishi’s own “eat out to spread the virus” meal deals.
The temporarily cheap food that boosted coronavirus tells us much about a gimmicky Cabinet Minister with his eye on No10.
He plays to the crowd but when we stop and dissect what Sunak actually does, the story is grim.
Either Starmer and Labour begin exposing Sunak now or they could pay a high price in a year or two.
The Chancellor isn’t as good as his PR.
