In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Earth has been destroyed for the construction of an interplanetary bypass highway and a supercomputer. After analyzing the data of seven and a half million years, he has reached the conclusion that the number 42 is “the answer to all questions about life, the universe and anything.” But if Arthur Dent –the English slob star of the science fiction satire– has it raw, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, even more so.
In the UK Politics Guide, the country’s economy and social fabric have been destroyed by austerity, the pandemic, the Ukraine war and thirteen years of Conservative rule, and there is no magic number answering the questions of the electorate about the lack of economic growth, the increase in the cost of living, immigration, corruption and the deterioration of public education and health. 42 days have passed since Sunak’s arrival in Downing Street, and nothing has improved. He now he has passed the hundred barrier, and neither.
Sunak lacks a mandate (neither from the electorate nor from the Conservative base), since he was handpicked by the Tory parliamentary group to succeed Liz Truss when he wanted to lower taxes and the markets intervened de facto the United Kingdom. And he is at the helm of a ship adrift, with an economy in free fall (the one with the lowest growth in the G7 and the only one that according to the IMF will enter a recession this year), twenty-one points behind Labor in the latest surveys and one wave of strikes as only the oldest of the place remember (February was greeted with the strike of three hundred thousand teachers, the massive closure of schools, without trains and with soldiers stamping passports at airports instead of customs officials). Despite all this, and despite his promises of transparency and professionalism, his government continues to be weighed down by an endless stream of scandals. When it is not the former Minister of Economy (Nadhim Zahawi) who does not pay taxes, it is the Minister of Justice (Dominic Raab) who is investigated for bullying.
Nor has number three been the answer to anything, because Brexit, which has just celebrated its third anniversary, has only made things more complicated in terms of trade, foreign investment and productivity, which is the lowest since the industrial revolution. due in part to the disappearance of a million people from the workforce, including Europeans who have decided to return to their countries, those over fifty who have retired and long-term covid patients. These are the things that voluntarily abandon the largest commercial market in the world, with a volume of 600,000 million euros a year, brings.
It is true that Sunak, a hundred days after assuming the helm, has stabilized the ship and baled out part of the water. It doesn’t look like she’s going to hit the cliffs, but he’s not going anywhere either, except for likely regime change two years from now. The tax burden is the highest in seven decades, nobody sees a way to generate growth without lowering taxes (something that investment funds have banned), almost eight million Britons are on the waiting list for operations, every day there are one strike or another and their only mission is to manage a slow decline. Only 27% of voters believe that the prime minister is doing things right, while 72% think that he will lose the next election. A bleak picture, enough to sink anyone’s morale.
And all this, with the Conservative Party divided (as it has been since Brexit), and former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss scheming to regain power if the results of the May municipal elections are as disastrous as forecast. Sunak offers pragmatism, boredom and technocracy, no drama, but lacks a narrative. He is tragically tied to the present, with no past or future, like Bill Murray on Groundhog Day. Whatever he does, the alarm goes off again and everything repeats itself. No number answers increasingly bitter questions, not 3, not 100, not 42.
