Even when seen through Daily Mail headlines, things do not look good right now for Rishi Sunak’s five priorities. At the new year, the prime minister announced five measures by which he expects to be judged. Two were social: reducing NHS waiting lists and stopping the Channel small boats. Three were economic: halving inflation (at that time running at 10.7%), growing the economy and reducing national debt. With an election looming, such goals matter more than usual.
Last week was duly designated “NHS week” in the government’s summer publicity push. It was not a success. Embarrassingly, the NHS waiting list for England has just risen to 7.6 million people, the highest since the figure began to be consistently monitored in 2007. In a hospital photocall last week, Mr Sunak himself admitted that progress had “stalled”.
The preceding “small boats week” was no better. The Bibby Stockholm migrant barge initiative was a debacle. Defying bad weather, 1,519 asylum seekers crossed the Channel in the seven days to 18 August. At least six migrants drowned the previous weekend. And the Rwanda deportation scheme remains stalled too. The government’s shabby record means Tory papers have fallen back on being rude to France.
Which leaves Mr Sunak’s economic priorities. Far from falling, government debt is currently increasing. The government borrowed £54bn in the first quarter of 2023-24, compared with £42bn in the same period in 2022-23. So at least one of his economic priorities is being missed on a comparable scale to those on the NHS and the boats.
With inflation and growth, things are currently a bit less dire. A drop in energy prices drove a sharp fall in inflation last week, down from 7.9% in June to 6.8% in July. The target of halving the inflation rate to under 5.4% may be achievable, though much will depend on core inflation and wages, both still rising more strongly.
But there are big political problems for Mr Sunak with both the inflation goal and that of growing the economy. To a technocrat like him, to halve the inflation rate is something measurable to celebrate. So is an increase in the size of the economy, even when it is as small as the 0.2% growth that the UK economy registered in the quarter to June.
Yet in the lives lived by most people, things are rather different. In this real world, macroeconomic statistics count for relatively little in household budget terms. Even if inflation were to return to 2%, prices and charges will not be reducing in real terms. Instead they will continue to rise, albeit less fast. A red flag also attaches to the growth figure. Positive figures may be better than negative ones, but the differences are marginal for households. The gap between how things are in the macroeconomy and how they feel in households is huge.
Politically, this is the big problem that Mr Sunak seems unable to solve. He has defined himself as a prime minister who can deliver. Yet even if his priorities were the right ones, which they are not, and the figures showed him ticking all his five boxes – they continue to show the opposite – he would struggle to persuade voters that he understands their priorities. It is one of the reasons why Labour is far ahead in polls about the cost of living. The latest figures show the plan is working, Mr Sunak claimed last week. But they don’t – and it isn’t.
