On Britain’s Latest Prime Minister Du Jour

Rishi Sunak has vowed to unite his party and the country. Given the rightwards drift of the Conservative Party since David Cameron and Brexit, those two goals are bound to be contradictory. Especially since Sunak has no democratic mandate for the tough medicine that he says he’ll soon have to deliver. For the good of the British people, of course.

Sunak has made it clear he won’t be calling a general election any time soon. That means his decrees will be imposed on the British public, who – unless the Tories collapse internally – are not scheduled to have their say before the end of 2024. This is Rishi Sunak’s Xi Jinping moment, and like Xi he aims to make the most of the power that’s now been thrust into his hands.

Much has already been made of Sunak being the first British PM to come from an ethnic minority. Any sense of upwards mobility that this may convey has to be tempered by the fact that Sunak is also one of the richest Prime Ministers in the entire history of Britain. A former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund manager, Sunak married the heir to the Infosys software fortune. The Sunak household has been estimated to be worth around £730 million, or $NZ1.45 billion at the current exchange rate.

Sunak has professed a wish as PM to serve the country that has given him so much. His wife Akshata Murty evidently takes a more pragmatic view. As a tax dodge, Murty claimed non-domicile status in order to avoid paying tax in Britain on her foreign earnings. That aside, the vastness of the Sunak family fortune need not be a political problem. If only for appearances sake however, it does impose on Sunak a duty of care towards ordinary Britons less blessed with the means to endure the policies he has promoted – first as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Boris Johnson, and then during his campaigns for the party leadership.

Thankfully, Sunak lacks the neo-liberal zeal that proved to be the undoing of Liz Truss. However, the Tory government policies of austerity that he has long advocated have always sat very awkwardly alongside his own conspicuous displays of wealth. These displays have recently included £450 Prada sneakers, £1,500 bespoke suits, and a £180 smart coffee mug that according to its advertising blurb, “allows you to set an exact drinking temperature and keeps it there for up to three hours, so your coffee is never too hot, or too cold.” The Georgian manor house in his North Yorkshire constituency that he resides in on weekends has recently been kitted out with a £400,000 swimming pool, gym, spa and tennis court:

Soaring energy costs mean it could cost more than £14,000 a year to heat the 12-metre by 5-metre pool – almost six times the average family’s energy bill.

Extreme wealth will not make it impossible for him to lead. But it will make it hard for Britons to feel during the cold winter months soon to come, that their new leader is sharing the hard times right there alongside them.

Sunak’s schedule

Sunak is offering the hope of stability. No more of those flamboyant Boris Johnson hi-jinks, no more of the radical extremism of Liz Truss. Instead, Sunak is peddling the hope that Britain can now return to the boring old pre-Brexit policies of Tory orthodoxy as practiced under David Cameron, several lifetimes ago. Maybe Sunak can once again manage to make the Conservatives look like they know what they’re doing, even if it does involve the systematic expansion of social and economic inequality.

Sunak could never convince the Conservative Party’s racist voting wing that he was white enough to be leader, but he never had any problem in convincing the party hierarchy that he was right enough. A Eurosceptic since adolescence and a Brexiteer in 2016, Sunak has promised a new Brexit delivery working group to scrap the estimated 2,400 social and environmental rights and protections that went along with EU membership.

The anti-immigrant wing of the party has welcomed his 10 point plan to narrow the grounds on which asylum seekers can claim refuge in Britain, to cap the asylum numbers, and to deport as many asylum seekers as possible on flights to Rwanda. Sunak also plans to stem the migrant influx by boosting the border protection force and by engaging more cooperatively with France to police the borders than Boris Johnson ever managed to do.

Sunak has promised to increase defence spending “ by whatever it takes to make the country safe.” In the past, he has expressed the view that China is Britain’s “number one enemy” and has promised to close the 30 Confucius Institutes that currently operate out of Britain’s universities, and to put an end to any and all China/UK research partnerships. Sunak has also promised a “NATO-Style” alliance to combat Beijing’s “technological aggression,” and its industrial espionage efforts. He has also said he would “consider” making it illegal for Chinese firms to buy important UK assets.

Sunak has vowed to continue with Britain’s military and humanitarian aid support for Ukraine, while refusing to engage in any dialogue with Vladimir Putin. On domestic policy, Sunak says he supports housing intensification and greenfields protection, while vowing to deter developers from land-banking. The NHS is likely to get little relief from Sunak. Public health services may even be subjected to further cuts: all that he has promised is a task force to investigate backlogs, and the creation of “100 specialist surgical hubs” to bring down surgical waiting times. Bizarrely, Sunak has also promised to impose a £10 fine on anyone who misses their doctor’s appointment.

An opponent of trans rights, Sunak has promised to crack down on trans athletes competing in any sport other than that traditionally associated with their biological sex at birth. Moreover, Sunak has vowed to pass legislation that a person’s gender is only that which has been assigned to them by biology at birth. Finally…. On the economy, Sunak shares Truss’ tax cutting ambitions but has promised to proceed more gradually, once inflation has been brought under control via interest rate increases. On his watch, tax cuts will be “balanced” by cuts to public services and will not be financed by further debt.

So far the markets seem to be welcoming this likely return to Tory right wing market economics as previously understood during the halcyon days of David Cameron. The British public will be harder to convince that it's OK to inflict the same shrinking options on them, seemingly forever.

Footnote: If Britons did somehow manage to have a say at the ballot box this year on who leads them and how, there would be a landslide change of government. This would then herald the first time since 1834 that Britain would have experienced the pleasure of enduring four different Prime Ministers in a single calendar year.

Sunak won’t be calling a snap election, but one can dream. Besides, Lord Melbourne, one of those revolving door PMs back in 1834 seems to have been the Boris Johnson of his era. His various terms as an MP and PM were marked by regular sex and corruption scandals. He was initially blackmailed and then sued in court by the husband of one of his mistresses, Caroline Norton.

Earlier, his wife had embarked on a notorious affair with Lord Byron, and it was she who coined the famous phrase that he was “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” As one modern historian concluded: "It is irrefutable that Melbourne's personal life was problematic. Spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies were harmless, not so the whippings administered to orphan girls taken into his household as objects of charity…"

Unlike Sunak, Melbourne hadn’t even wanted the job when King William IV first invited him to form a government. It would mean a lot more extra work, Melbourne fumed, and – reportedly – he complained to his secretary that “ I think [being PM] is a damned bore. I am in many minds as what to do.” To which the secretary is said to have replied: "Why, damn it all, such a position was never held by any Greek or Roman: and if it only lasts three months, it will be worthwhile to have been Prime Minister of England.” "By God, that's true," Melbourne is said to have replied, I’ll do it!

A keen supporter of slavery, he later became a key adviser to the young Queen Victoria.

Point being, Boris Johnson’s career shouldn’t be lamented as being symptomatic of Britain’s decline from former greatness. Back in the day, bozo Boris (and wacky Liz Truss) would have fitted in just fine as the Empire began to hit its straps. Britain’s ruling class has always had more than its share of personal eccentricities and lifestyles of rampant excess.

If anything, Rishi Sunak’s lavish Prada sneakers and super-chic coffee mug only make him look pale by comparison.

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