There are three things in life, health, money and love, Cristina and the Stop sang in the sixties of the last century, when television was in black and white. About love, the State can do very little. Regarding health, maintain a good free public health system. And about money, whatever you want, lower or raise taxes and interest rates, control or let inflation run wild, make the economy grow or not, increase or not the minimum wage, grant more or less social subsidies. …
The English people voting today in the Tamworth and Mid Befordshire by-elections to fill two vacant seats are wondering precisely what the Government has done for them, whether their lives have improved or worsened in the 13 years that the Conservatives have been in power, if their purchasing power has gone up or down, if they have to wait more or less in lines to go to the doctor and the hospital, if there are more or fewer students in their children’s classes, if there are more or fewer immigrants in their town, if the quality of public services and infrastructure have deteriorated or not, whether the economy has grown or shrank… At this point in the film, the vast majority look with nostalgia to 2010, when everything cost less, there were no seven millions of people on the waiting list for operations, and before that madness called Brexit.
Partial elections like today’s are representative of the collective mood, and even more so in the case of two seats with a strong conservative tradition. For the Tories, losing them would be the worst possible premonition for the elections in a year’s time. Rishi Sunak – the fifth prime minister in the cycle of power that began with David Cameron and seems to be coming to an end – knows that it is almost impossible for things to change enough in 12 months for people to think that – love of margin – everything is better in the areas that are the responsibility of the Government. That is why he has decided to take a turn and change strategy.
Plan A for Sunak – who has only been elected as prime minister by the conservative parliamentary group – was to present himself, after the hard face and excesses of Johnson, and the libertarian hallucination of Liz Truss, as the voice of lost reason, common sense. He offered five guarantees to the British: that he would reduce inflation by half and stop the increase in the cost of living, the economy would grow, public spending would fall, waiting lists for public medicine would be reduced and immigrants would stop arriving in boats. across the English Channel.
But more than a year has passed since his arrival at Downing Street and, although inflation has moderated, reality is very stubborn and is not on track to fulfill those promises, far from it. So he has completely changed course and presents himself – incredibly, despite the baggage of failures he carries – as a rebel, a revolutionary, the true agent of change in opposition to the Labor leader Keir Starmer, the man capable of putting an end to “thirty years of failed politics” (for which he blames Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, May and Truss, but not Brexit) that have led the country to the current regrettable situation.
The Tories lost the philosophical connection with Thatcher a long time ago, and Sunak intends to recover it now, quickly and quickly, in a version that would seem like a cartoon. Since she can’t offer health, money and love, or anything that will make voters feel happy and content, his new motto is suddenly “hard decisions for a better future.” Ignoring that their people have had 13 years to manage the future, and what they have done is make it worse.
The new Thatcherism of Sunak the Rebel is a potpourri of somewhat anarchic and unconnected plans. Return to austerity and the saving mentality, with the cancellation of the Manchester section of the high-speed train. Make it clear that in his opinion “a man is a man and a woman is a woman.” Fight to the death against smoking. Reform the educational system. Open the doors to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Convention on Human Rights to be able to send political asylum seekers to Rwanda. Fight the woke culture, the denunciation of the empire and colonialism. Dilute environmental policies. Defend the car against the bicycle or scooter. Extract oil from the North Sea again. Reduce social aid. But about lowering taxes – the traditional essence of conservatism, along with frugality – nothing at all, because there is no money and the markets would not see it too well (tell Truss).
Labour’s annual conference has been a success (despite being overshadowed by the situation in Israel), compared to the dissonances that dominated the Conservatives’. But Sunak is still not giving up despite trailing far behind in all the polls. The Tories believe they have a sacrosanct right to govern, and if they die it will be by killing, exacerbating the culture wars and embracing Trumpism, blaming the BBC, civil servants, judges, lawyers who defend immigrants for their misfortunes. , the intellectual and academic world. Those who do not agree with them, as happened with Brexit, are branded as rebels and traitors. The party is an evangelical cult. The world is divided between believers and unbelievers.
But no matter how much Sunak reinvents himself, the political smell is that of a morgue, and the great battle that lies ahead is who will take the reins of the right after the elections, the moderates or the radicals. Of the three things in life, the British fail in health and money, and love goes by neighborhood.
