Iain Macleod, the shortest-lived Chancellor of the Exchequer in British history (June 20-July 20, 1970), had time to utter a brilliant sentence before dying suddenly: “Socialists plot their plots, Liberals dream their dreams.” dreams, and meanwhile we conservatives do the work that needs to be done.”
With Boris Johnson (an authoritarian populist) and Liz Truss (a libertarian), the Tories abandoned those roles and allowed themselves to dream crazy things like Brexit or lower taxes. With Rishi Sunak –a prudent and soporific accountant, with a nutritious but not exciting Disney smile– they have returned to that role of effective managers that Macleod referred to, and to trying to solve the myriad of problems accumulated in twelve years of conservative rule that have created a dysfunctional country, plunged into chaos, with a shattered economy, a broken territorial balance and so much social tension that there are strikes every day. Like in the late seventies.
Sunak will not lack work in the two years he has before the next elections, a period that he himself realizes is too short to rectify wrongs and for voters to recognize his merits. But in addition to delving into the details and seeking pragmatic solutions to thorny issues such as immigration, the dismal state of public health or chronic homelessness, the prime minister needs an identity.
He has tried to present himself as a male version of Thatcher, but it has not worked; as a younger edition (but just as boring and not falling asleep or having memory lapses) of Joe Biden; or as the English alter ego of Emmanuel Macron (both technocrats, former finance ministers, in their forties, quick to compromise, with fragile majorities and experience in Goldman Sachs and Rothschild banking).
With the French president, he shares a fluid policy that allows them to act almost as socialists on certain issues (Sunak has raised taxes and social benefits in defiance of Tory dogma), and as conservatives on others. Also tolerance of a certain amount of corruption in their parties, and a pragmatic attitude that has led them to back down on issues such as the reform of the retirement age in France or urban planning regulations in England. That said, the Downing Street incumbent is far to the right of Macron and a Eurosceptic, even though he realizes that Brexit isn’t working and is hampering the economic takeoff.
Sunak wants to be with respect to Johnson what Biden with respect to Trump, despite the age difference, an adult in politics instead of a teenager, however glanderous it may be, at the head of a divided party and a polarized society, which provides for above all a boring stability. The hope of both is that people, tired of the excesses of their predecessors, want a dose of boredom. Being boring is sexy.
The conservative Sunak would be the other side of the mirror in which the Democrat Biden looks. But, for the moment, he has not caught on with the comparison either with the US president –at the other ideological pole– or with the French, or with his admired Thatcher. Much more dangerous for him is to be seen as a new John Major (serious, but swept away by the economic crisis), a new Gordon Brown (the definition of anti-charisma), Edward Heath (who has lost his grip on the unions) or James Callaghan –his true nightmare–, which fell after the winters of discontent of 1978 and 1979, when a wave of strikes to demand wage increases lost two million days of work and paralyzed the country.
The winds of political transition often come before the storms. Major’s “classless society” anticipated Blair’s meritocracy, Brown’s cuts anticipated Cameron’s austerity, and Callaghan’s monetarist measures anticipated Thatcher’s. The parties that are going to cede power make their rivals’ ideas their own, in a vain attempt to survive. As now the Tories with the rates to the benefits of the energetics, a reflection of the new times. The UK’s economic model since the 1980s – low taxes, low interest rates, low inflation and low wages – is in crisis, and the ultra-liberal Sunak admits that “the market has its limits”. Thatcher never did.
If in the Brexit revolution Johnson was Danton, and Truss Robespierre, who is Rishi Sunak? He seeks a war with the unions, destroy Mike Lynch (who organizes the railway strikes) as the Iron Lady killed Arthur Scargill, reduce asylum applications, reform healthcare and refuse “out of responsibility” to a salary increase the 19% demanded by nurses, while dully managing the UK’s decline. But boring and pragmatic there is no one who beats Labor leader Keir Starmer, who also knows how to steal policies from the right (toughness on immigration, flag, homeland, Brexit). And that can be a very big problem.
