To govern in difficult times, a prime minister needs a candid account of problems matched with credible solutions. Rishi Sunak provided neither in what had been billed as a significant policy speech on Wednesday. He referred fleetingly to Covid and the war in Ukraine as causes of the present difficulties, but there was no critical analysis of the way Britain has been governed in recent years.
Of course there wasn’t. To speak honestly about public services would have meant admitting that budget austerity has depleted provision and demoralised staff. To explain the economic malaise, the Tory leader would have had to acknowledge Brexit as national self-sabotage.
That would be a repudiation of positions held sacred by most Conservatives. Even if the prime minister saw the wisdom in such a volte face, his MPs would never permit it. Instead, Mr Sunak set out a plan to tinker in the margins of huge challenges. The smallness of his ambition was padded out with moralising banality.
The core message was a focus on “the people’s priorities” – health, education, antisocial behaviour, economic recovery and cross-Channel migration. This is an unintentional admission that the Tories have wasted 12 years obsessing about the wrong things, or taking bad decisions that make longstanding problems worse.
With less than two years before an election is due, Mr Sunak now hopes that voters will judge him sincere in sharing their concerns, and reward him with more time to address them. This is unlikely. On the economy, Mr Sunak could get lucky with a recession that is shallower and shorter than forecast. But positive growth would not necessarily compensate voters for the downgrade in living standards caused by a combination of inflation and wage stagnation.
On migration, the practical way to reduce illegal boat crossings is to restore legal routes for asylum claimants. That is beyond taboo in Tory circles. Instead, the prime minister will walk into the familiar trap of making unrealistic promises that succeed only in ramping up public anxiety and social division.
As for health and education, Downing Street has shown the weakness of its hand by denying that the situation is critical and claiming that existing budgets are adequate. Everyone who uses public services, or works in them, knows those things to be untrue.
British voters want schools, hospitals, transport and a criminal justice system delivered to a standard that the current tax-and-spend policy will not purchase. Mr Sunak’s options are limited by budget constraints that were dictated last year by subservience to jittery bond markets, not public need. The cornerstone of Conservative economic policy is fiscal atonement to restore a reputation for financial sobriety that was shredded by Liz Truss. That is no basis for the kind of national renewal – “a better future for children and grandchildren” – that the prime minister promises. Platitudes about innovation and creativity will not compensate for a lack of investment.
There were policy pledges, but no sense of how they would be achieved. Mr Sunak’s chosen instrument for improving people’s lives is a change in “mindset”, an abstraction that won’t shorten NHS waiting lists or cut inflation. He is a caretaker prime minister who owes his position to the failures of his predecessors. He is trapped by that legacy. He cannot prescribe meaningful solutions to problems when identifying their causes would mean denouncing the government he leads.
