Sunak marks 100 days as UK prime minister as problems mount
London – U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has angry unions to the left of him, anxious Conservative Party lawmakers to the right and, in the middle, millions of voters he must win over to avert electoral defeat.
It’s a daunting situation for Sunak, who on Thursday marks 100 days in office, more than twice the number of his ill-fated predecessor, Liz Truss. Installed as Conservative leader after Truss’ plan for huge tax cuts sparked panic, the 42- year- old Sunak calmed financial markets and averted economic meltdown after he assumed the post of prime minister on Oct. 25.
Next, Britain’s youngest leader for two centuries – and its first prime minister of South Asian heritage – has promised to tame soaring inflation, get the sluggish economy growing, ease pressure on the overburdened health care system and “restore the integrity back into politics” after years of scandals under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Easier said than done. “The things that happened before I was prime minister, I can’t do anything about,” Sunak told a group of health workers this week. “What I think you can hold me to account for is how I deal with the things that arise on my watch.”
Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Sunak had succeeded in overcoming the impression that the U.K. “had a completely lunatic government.”
“You would chalk that up as the first thing that he had on his to-do list,” she said. “Otherwise, it’s slightly hard to see concrete achievements.”
Sunak is a former U.K. Treasury chief, and his top priority has been the country’s economic malaise. Gross domestic product remains smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, and the International Monetary Fund forecast this week that the U.K. will be the only major economy to contract this year, shrinking by 0.6%.
Sunak blames global forces – disruption from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Critics say the elephant in the room is Brexit, which has led to a sharp reduction in trade between the U.K. and the European Union.
Sunak, a longtime advocate of Britain’s departure from the bloc, insisted Wednesday that the cost-of-living crisis had “nothing to do with Brexit.”
Whatever the causes, Sunak has little economic room to maneuver. Annual inflation hit a four-decade high of 11.1% in October and remained at a painful 10.5% in December. The U.K. is in the midst of its biggest wave of strikes in decades as nurses, paramedics, teachers, border agents and other workers seek pay increases to offset the soaring cost of living and the stresses of holding a job in an increasingly threadbare public sector.