Nigel Jones

Rishi Sunak has been Prime Minister for nearly 100 days – but what has Sunak done with his victory since moving into No. 10? Sadly, the answer is very little. Despite enjoying a healthy Commons majority inherited from Boris Johnson's landslide election victory, no new legislation has been passed and dubious measures from the old regime, like the Online Safety Bill, have been retained. There has been plenty of talk – not least in the five-point plan unveiled in the PM's first speech of the new year – but not much action. Sunak has been talking big on what he intends to do Back in October when he became PM, Sunak pledged to lead a government with 'integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level'.

The government has a plan for dealing with the wave of walkouts affecting nurses, paramedics, Border Force staff and a swathe of public sector workers: send in the soldiers. Unfortunately though the idea has hit a snag: the army is not impressed. The head of the armed forces himself, Admiral Sir Tony Radakan, chief of the defence staff, has said that the military should not be the ‘go to support service’ during strike action.  ‘We are busy doing lots of (other) things on behalf of the nation’ Admiral Radakan added. ‘We’re not spare capacity’. While it may be unusual for troops to be called out to man vital services in Britain, it is not unprecedented.

The news – reported in the FT Weekend – that former Prime Minister David Cameron is to teach a three-week course in politics next month at the New York Abu Dhabi University is quite something. For Cameron’s political career ended in spectacular failure – and he has hardly covered himself in glory since. A review of the former PM’s six years in Downing Street would have to include the way that it ended – which negated any achievements that his previous coalition with Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems may have chalked up – with Dave’s disastrous decision to call and lose the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. No one forced Cameron to take the plunge that ended his time in power so swiftly and finally.

If an election were held tomorrow, not only would Labour win, they would bury the Tories with a landslide majority of 314 seats, leaving the Conservatives with a forlorn rump of just 69. That's the verdict of an opinion poll from Savanta. Even for an embattled Tory party, the verdict is notably grim. According to the poll, not only would former prime minister Boris Johnson lose his Uxbridge seat – there would be no Tory MPs left in London at all. Rishi Sunak would also get the boot from his hitherto rock solid safe rural seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. Every single one of the famous Red Wall of former Labour seats in the north would fall and revert to their former allegiance, and there would be no Tories left north of Lincolnshire.

This Christmas, Britain is facing what is not far short of a general strike. Rail workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, postal workers, and firefighters have already announced a strike wave or are balloting their members for authorisation to do so. Rail traffic across the country will be paralysed. Families will be unable to easily get together for the festive season. Christmas gifts will go undelivered. In hospitals, an already overstretched NHS looks in danger of breaking down altogether. Seriously ill patients – already facing delays in getting to hospital – may now die before they can do so. Even if they do manage to get to a hospital, will there be enough nurses on hand to care for them?

Across China, the world’s most populous nation and its second largest economy, scenes unprecedented since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 are unfolding. In city after city crowds of young people are taking to the streets, holding up blank placards in eloquent protest against state censorship, and demanding to be treated ‘as citizens not slaves’. The trigger for these displays of popular dissent are the Communist regime’s draconian lockdowns designed to snuff out spreading Covid infections in the country where the virus originated. But, as is often the way with such popular protests, the original cause of the protests is widening into demands for freedoms which we in the West take for granted but which those taking part in the demonstrations have never known.

It is only a month since Boris Johnson gave up his dramatic attempt to regain the Premiership he reluctantly surrendered in July. Already he is making headlines once more.  In an interview with CNN a slimmed down and bubbly Boris caused a diplomatic rumpus by accusing France and Italy of going wobbly and claiming that Germany wanted to see Ukraine quickly defeated by Putin’s invasion last February (thereby less than subtlety suggesting that only the firm resolution of one Boris Johnson kept a wavering Europe on Kyiv’s side).  For good measure, he dismissed claims that Brexit was a cause of our current economic woes as ‘nonsense'.

Observe, this dark weekend, a contrast. On Whitehall, the centre of British government, the Royal Family and leaders of our political class gather to pay solemn tribute at the Cenotaph to those who gave their lives for their country in the two world wars and other conflicts since. In a year that has witnessed the death of our beloved longest reigning monarch and political turbulence involving the rapid turnover of three prime ministers, the annual ceremony is especially poignant and shows Britain at its best.

Overnight President Biden announced that he intends to run again for the White House in 2024 and beat Donald Trump in a rematch of their 2020 contest. This would be funny if it wasn’t a tragedy for both the US and the wider world. We thus have the prospect of a man who will be 82 in two years' time, and is already, in the words of historian Niall Ferguson ‘manifestly senile’, facing off against a 78-year-old Trump if, as widely expected, the orange man announces another presidential run next week. The absurd spectacle of two vain old men fighting for a future neither will live to see is enough to make friends of the US weep. Biden made his statement even as the votes in the US midterms were still being counted.

Let us face an unpleasant fact that many seem curiously reluctant to report or discuss. President Joe Biden appears to be suffering from severe and worsening cognitive decline which often makes his public appearances an embarrassing debacle.  As Americans cast their votes in the midterm elections which may well see Biden’s Democrats lose their slim majorities in one or both houses of Congress, the mental state of the leader of the free world should be of pressing concern to everyone on the planet. But we hear very little about it. Much of the US media made a tacit agreement that even mentioning the subject was an offence against good taste.  It is not as if evidence of the President’s decay is not abundant and out there for those who care to look.

As Home Secretary Suella Braverman struggles to keep her job in the face of vicious attacks from the official opposition, her fate will be the first big political test for new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.  If Sunak bows to the almost hysterical shrieks for Braverman’s scalp she will be the fourth big beast brought down by a combined Labour and media assault – aided by a handful of usefully idiotic backbench Tory MPs only too willing to publicly undermine the government – since the Tory election victory in 2019. Already Labour MPs such as Chris Bryant have called on the Home Secretary to resign, while Keir Starmer has said Sunak should sack Braverman as she could pose a security risk.

Rishi Sunak told the Tories to ‘unite or die’ as he took office this week. Some of his party colleagues appear to be pursuing the latter option. It hasn’t taken long for Conservative MPs to resume the civil war that has brought the party to its current parlous and deeply divided state. First came an open clash in the Commons chamber between Jacob Rees-Mogg and fellow Tory Richard Graham, the MP for Gloucester. Not waiting for his inevitable sacking as business secretary, Rees-Mogg had only just finished penning his handwritten resignation letter on Tuesday when he accused Graham of never having accepted Brexit. Graham angrily denied the charge as ‘utterly untrue’ and Rees-Mogg courteously withdrew.

In the past century, only four British prime ministers have returned to 10 Downing Street after being ejected from office. As Boris Johnson attempts such a second coming only weeks after being ousted by his own MPs, the historical record suggests that if he returns from the political grave the resurrection won’t produce a miracle. The first returnee from the ranks of the political undead was the Tory statesman Stanley Baldwin, a stolid and unflappable Worcestershire iron master. Indeed Baldwin got not only a second coming but a third too.

Nothing, not even the world’s oldest and most successful political party, lasts forever. So could the current crisis convulsing the Conservative party mean its extinction as a significant force in British life? Only three years ago simply posing this question would have seemed ridiculous. Back in December 2019, it was not the Tories who were staring down the barrel of a gun, but Labour. Boris Johnson, promising to get Brexit done, delivered an 80-seat majority for the triumphant Tories, hoovering up working-class votes and seizing seats that had never elected a Conservative before. After suffering their worst defeat since 1935, it was Labour who looked as though they were on their way to the political graveyard. What a difference three years can make.

The WhatsApp message doing the rounds in Westminster yesterday was succinct: ‘Rishi PM. Hunt CX. Penny FS. And it’s a done deal’. Except that the only thing that’s ‘done’ is the Conservatives as a credible party of government. If there is indeed a stitch-up, one that sees the installation of the beaten leadership candidates as prime minister, chancellor, and foreign secretary, then the Tories can kiss goodbye not only to the next few general elections but also to their very existence as the most successful governing party in the democratic world. How has the party that swept back into power just three years ago with a massive 80-seat majority so comprehensively trashed its reputation for competent government?