The Tories should embrace change
It must be with some consternation that Rishi Sunak contemplates his leadership race so far. Little more than a week after the former Chancellor topped the fifth MPS’ ballot in a row, he finds himself with 48 hours to save his campaign. On Monday, voting papers will begin to arrive through the letter boxes of Conservative Party members and many will not wait long to send them back.
How has this happened? Were the party to have listened to the misguided advice emanating from some senior figures and elected for a coronation by MPS, Rishi Sunak would surely already be prime minister. Instead, he faces a membership which, like the country as a whole, is yearning for change and radicalism amid a series of debilitating crises.
When Boris Johnson won his landslide fewer than three years ago, he did so promising an end to the status quo. The pandemic may have delayed that change, but it only increased the need for it.
The transition of Covid into an endemic disease and Britain’s liberation, at last, from the European Union should have created another 1945 moment for the United Kingdom. The country is still recovering from two years of lockdowns, public services are groaning, inflation and gas prices are eating away at people’s aspirations and the housing crisis remains unsolved. All the while, the economic growth that could resolve so many of these problems remains hamstrung by stagnant productivity and the tax burden continues to rise, stifling growth further.
Yet the opportunity is there for a transformational decade that makes the country both richer and happier. It should come as no surprise, then, that the radicalism espoused by Liz Truss has inspired the Conservative Party membership, while Mr Sunak’s offer of continuity has not. In such circumstances, why should the Treasury and the Bank of England be considered beyond the reach of accountability? Mr Sunak may be the one who resigned from the Government and precipitated Mr Johnson’s downfall, while Ms Truss stayed loyal and avoided the wrath of the Prime Ministers’ backers. Yet it is she who has grasped that what went wrong under Mr Johnson was his abandonment of radicalism in the face of Treasury orthodoxy and scientific caution. Mr Sunak appears to believe that the country wants Johnsonian government without Mr Johnson the man. That is only partially true. It is the Johnsoniasm of 2019 that is in demand.
Rarely, if ever, does a fourth-term government get the chance to reinvent itself. To do so calls for radicalism and the questioning of any and all orthodoxy. Mr Sunak still has the chance to recognise this point.