Sunak must prove Osborne wrong
Adeveloping popular consensus that nothing works is a dangerous phenomenon for any government and especially one anxious to demonstrate competence. Tory MPS chose Rishi Sunak to lead them, after they removed Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, in order to restore the party’s reputation for capability. To that end, the Prime Minister has sought to project himself more as a proficient manager than a starry-eyed ideologue promising outcomes that cannot be delivered.
Yet as George Osborne, the former chancellor, said on Channel 4’s Andrew Neil Show on Sunday, “there’s a general sense that the Government’s not in control of events”. To some extent, this is unfair. Mr Sunak cannot end the war in Ukraine, which has pushed up energy prices and contributed to the cost of living crisis that has triggered a wave of strikes across the public and private sectors.
But a good deal of domestic policy is within his ambit. The NHS is a disaster in the making, with nurses set to strike over Christmas, record waiting lists and thousands of excess deaths caused by the late diagnosis of life-threatening illnesses during the pandemic shutdown. The Government says it will bring in Army personnel to drive ambulances; yet if they take hours to arrive and cannot offload patients because there are no beds it does not matter who is behind the wheel.
Freeing up beds occupied by people who have been designated fit to leave but have nowhere to go because the care system is shot to pieces must be a priority for any government wanting to show that it is in charge of events. Not being able to see a GP easily is a source of frustration for millions, as are difficulties getting passports or driving licences and other critical documents controlled by the state.
Last week’s extraordinary net migration figures, combined with the failure to control cross-channel refugee traffic, give further support to Mr Osborne’s observation. True, Mr Sunak has only been in office a few weeks, but already there are indications that No10 is slow to react and is not giving the party a clear enough lead on a host of issues. He has problems managing his own parliamentary party, with planning laws set to be watered down in the face of a threatened rebellion. Many Tory MPS are jumping ship at the next election, fearing they will lose their seats and the party will be out of office. It certainly will be unless Mr Sunak can prove Mr Osborne wrong.