Rishi sunak

Last summer, all the Tory party could talk about was tax. It was at the heart of the leadership contest and the dividing line between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The then foreign secretary promised to move fast and bring in deficit-financed tax cuts; the former chancellor said this would end in tears and instead pledged fully funded cuts over six years. Neither plan saw the light of day. All talk of tax cuts was suspended after Truss’s mini-Budget, when the premise of her borrow-and-spend agenda was tested to destruction. Since then, tax has become a difficult topic to bring up. Even within Tory circles, calls to cut tax are usually met with a pointed question: did you forget what happened last time?

Where do the by-election results leave Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer? The Labour leader had been hoping for a victory parade but his party’s failure to secure Uxbridge – with the Tories clinging on by under 500 votes – has led to Labour unrest. Rather than tour the media studios with a single message that Labour are on the cusp of power following their decisive victory in Selby, both Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner used broadcast interviews to take aim at Sadiq Khan. The pair cited Ulez – ultra low emission zones – as why they lost, and suggested it shows what happens when politicians don’t listen to voters, something of which Khan ought to take note. Ulez became a cost of living issue.

Rishi Sunak goes into the summer holidays in the same position he began the year: 20 points behind in the polls. In other ways it feels as if his premiership has gone backwards. Mortgage rates have risen above the levels they were under Liz Truss. The Tory psychodrama of the Boris Johnson era has led to two of the three by-elections taking place this week. Little progress has been made on Sunak’s ‘five priorities’ – the junior doctor strikes show no sign of abating and the Rwanda scheme is held up in the courts. ‘At this point Keir Starmer could probably announce backing for freedom of movement and still scrape in,’ says one downbeat minister.

Were I sure this was about me alone, I’d hardly bother to mention it: but I may be typical of quite a few others. If so, it’s a touch too early for the Tories to abandon hope. Last Saturday I wrote in the Times about Sir Keir Starmer, suggesting he lacks the voice or personal command of a prime minister who will need to bully the left into division lobbies and knock warring heads together within his party. Some 900 online readers responded beneath that column. A few agreed with me but the overwhelming majority simply raged against the present government, not a few suggesting that anything would be better than this.

As the average mortgage rate for a five-year fixed deal rises to 6 per cent, Rishi Sunak can find little relief in his personal approval ratings. ConservativeHome has published its monthly cabinet league table in which the Prime Minister's support among Tory members has hit its lowest level since he entered 10 Downing Street. Sunak at least has plenty of company in the red – he is one of a record nine cabinet ministers to find themselves with sub-zero approval ratings. These ministers include his deputy Oliver Dowden, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove and Therese Coffey. Sunak is now on -2.7, compared to a positive rating of 21.6 in June, but is still doing better than some of his predecessors. Boris Johnson previously hit -33.

Will the government meet its NHS target? Health Secretary Steve Barclay was asked about this when he did the broadcast round this morning, arguing that even though there were record waiting numbers, the government had successfully reduced the longest waits. But as Fraser wrote this week in his Telegraph column, Rishi Sunak is having to face up to the chance that he might miss this (and most of his other) five ‘priorities’ which he said the British people should judge him against at the next election. But voters might be paying a little less attention to another area of care where things are visibly going backwards: mental health.

‘Hold your nerve.’ Rishi’s ill-judged advice to voters last Sunday was perhaps his worst blunder yet. At PMQs it came up half a dozen times. Sir Keir Starmer made the first attempt but he was too verbose to inflict real damage. ‘Rather than lecturing others on holding their nerve why not locate his?’ He exposed Rishi’s confused housing policy and asked if any credible expert believes that the government will reach its house-building target this year. Rishi wriggled deftly and chucked out a few helpful statistics. ‘More homes are meeting our “decent homes” standard, the housing supply is up 10 per cent... and first-time buyers are at a 20-year high.

As mortgage rates surge and a new Opinium poll finds Labour’s lead has jumped to 18 points, Rishi Sunak appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show to insist that his plan is the right one. The interview was pre-recorded in the Downing Street garden yesterday, with Sunak commenting on the – now failed – attempted coup by Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and previewing his government’s long-term NHS workforce plan. However, the main portion of the at times, scrappy interview was spent on inflation and the consequences for mortgage holders.

As Rishi Sunak faces concern at home that his five priorities are slipping out of reach, he is flying to Washington tonight for another foray on the world stage. The Prime Minister will spend two days in the USA where he will meet President Joe Biden for his first bilateral in America (and the fifth since he entered No. 10). While Boris Johnson made his dislike of the phrase ‘special relationship’ well known, Sunak has no such qualms – though one government aide suggests that it still may not appear in his lexicon: the Prime Minister prefers instead to refer to America as the UK’s greatest ally.

What kind of conservative is Rishi Sunak? This time last year, there was a clear answer: he was a fiscal hawk who was worried about how much the government had to borrow to fund the Covid crisis. As chancellor, he was always fighting with the prime minister over high spending. When Sunak tried to raise the national insurance rate, he did so partly to send his party an important message: the borrowing and spending has to stop. Now Sunak is in No. 10 and Boris Johnson isn’t around to demand more spending. There has been a Budget and a list of priorities – and Sunak’s agenda is starting to emerge. It includes a tax burden not just higher than any time in the 1970s, but any time in postwar history. A record proportion of the workforce are paying the higher rate of tax.

Ever since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, his aides have worried that May would be the month of mutiny. His mandate over the party has always been weak, since he lost the summer’s leadership race to Liz Truss. He was also certain to preside over heavy losses in the local elections, so the aftermath of that defeat was seen as the ideal time for a rebel to strike. As if to tempt fate, Sunak invited more than 200 Tory MPs for drinks in the No. 10 garden on Monday night. He attempted to lift spirits with jokes at Keir Starmer’s expense. ‘He was meant to be writing a book about his ideas for Britain,’ Sunak said. ‘But – and I’m not making this up – he has had to return the advance to the publisher because he couldn’t come up with any.

When Rishi Sunak delivered his five key pledges at the start of January, the latest data we had for the inflation rate was for last November. It was up 10.7 per cent on the year, having fallen from a peak of 11.1 per cent the month before. Everyone thought this was the start of a fast and spectacular fall, with virtually all forecasts showing a welcome decline in the rate of inflation. Off the back of those forecasts, the Prime Minister oozed confidence when he promised to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of this year. Speaking to an audience in Stratford, Sunak promised that an ‘ease’ to the cost-of-living crisis and greater ‘financial security’ was on its way.