Sunak is not sunk yet
Hugo Keith KC is clearly an able fellow. The tallest poppies at the bar often attract envy and he is no exception. I have heard it said that he is not quite as good as he thinks he is, but that this would be impossible. There was another discussion. Was he arrogant, or merely confident? That said, a barrister who lacks confidence is likely to buckle under the stress of a demanding practice.
Apropos confidence, the tall poppy was giving a formidable performance at the Covid inquiry – more so, certainly, than Lady Hallett – until the PM came along. On a difficult wicket, he made Mr Keith seem a couple of yards slower. Rishi Sunak also ended the week with an impressive interview in the Spectator. He did not for one moment seem like a Leader oppressed by the weight of relentlessly gloomy opinion polls. This is a man with plenty of fight in him. That is his party’s sole hope of a successful counter-attack.
He is certainly cool under fire. At midnight during the Tory party conference in Manchester, at a reception given by the Spectator, he could not have seemed calmer. No one would have guessed that twelve hours later, he would have to make a vitally important speech.
If that had been Margaret Thatcher, there would have been no visit to a reception. She would have been in her suite goring the speech-writers while insisting that this was the worst draft she had ever seen and would need to be entirely re-cast. Twelve hours later, exhausted secretaries would stumble into the press office, just in time to print out her text, which would of course be, as always, a triumph.
Sunak is altogether colder-blooded. Many leading prime ministers can be divided into two radically different personalities. There are the ones who have no difficulty in staying calm under pressure: Salisbury, Baldwin, Attlee, Cameron. Then there are those with a daemonic streak: Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill, Thatcher. These demiurges come into their own when it is a moment to reshape history. But they could be less effective when dealing with lesser challenges. At the time, I wrote that if Mrs Thatcher had been an airline pilot, the “fasten seatbelts” sign would never have been switched off. She and Lloyd George both lost office because their colleagues grew weary of constant crises.
So where does that leave Rishi Sunak? Some would conclude that he is a calm fellow but in highly un-calm circumstances. Though rationality comes easily to him, that may not be enough in these troubled times. The public needs emotion, uplift and leadership. They want to know where the country is going. Could he possibly be the man to tell them?
That is not – yet – impossible. While Rishi Sunak was chatting at the Speccie do, a breathtakingly audacious speech had been sent to print. You want change, he told the audience: so you should, so do I and I am the man to provide it. The retort was obvious. How can you possibly convince us that you will offer change, when your party has been in government for thirteen years? Yet the retort to that was equally obvious. Look at me. Do I resemble a staid, traditional Tory? Surely you can see that I am offering something radically new.
As soon as he arrived in No.10, some friends advised him to repudiate Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. One can see why he declined and anyway, his body language already projected the message. Rishi Sunak is different.
But just after that speech, everything did indeed change. Suddenly, British politics was swept off the front page. Textual analyses from Manchester gave way to Hamas, horror and hatred. For the indefinite future, we will remain in a world beset by bloodshed and danger. Even so, it should be possible to project a domestic agenda.
This should have three main aspects. First, it should not be impossible to persuade the public that Covid and Putin were not the Tories’ fault. This was one of the most difficult periods in the whole of British domestic history and the government should be forthright in defending its record. Certainly, Labour had nothing better to offer.
Second, even before Covid, there was a lot wrong with Britain’s public services. Although many of our public servants are indeed public-spirited, a lot of the structures were defective. Change is indeed necessary, while all Keir Starmer has to offer is more of the same.
Third, Rishi Sunak must tell us what Britain has meant to him and his family. For him and them, it has been a land of opportunity and aspiration. That is why he went into politics: to spread that message and those opportunities.
In this, he should have the assistance of several colleagues, including Kemi Badenoch, another embodiment of aspiration who has a further asset. Thus far, the government has not done enough to combat wokery. Badenoch will do that superbly well and drive the woke-ists crazy. They will make more noise, offer even more targets and help to sell the Sunak government’s new version of Britishness. That includes tough controls on immigration. It may even be that last week’s Tory rebels did the government a good turn, by forcing it to clarify and harden its position.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. The public wants change. Rishi Sunak intends to offer them precisely that. Could this possibly work? If Labour were led by Tony Blair, not a chance. But Keir Starmer is only the – very – small change for Tony Blair. Reverting to the question of arrogance versus confidence, Sir Keir cannot be accused of arrogance. But it may well be that he also lacks confidence, because he does not know what he himself now believes, and is waiting for the focus groups to guide his electoral calculations. That is no diet for hungry sheep.
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