Rishi Sunak — after one year as PM, how is he doing?
From the economy to small boats, Steven Swinford and Matt Dathan rate the prime minister’s performance on his own priorities
Rishi Sunak has endured a bruising first year as prime minister. When he came to power after Liz Truss’s disastrous 49 days in office, public expectations were relatively positive. A year into the job, those expectations do not appear to have been met.
A survey by Yougov 12 months ago found that 25 per cent expected him to be “good” or “great” as prime minister, 29 per cent “average” and 29 per cent “poor” or “terrible”. Now half of Britons say that he has been a poor or terrible prime minister.
Ministers are concerned that he is running out of time. Some already believe it is over, pointing to the fact that Labour’s 22-point lead in the polls has barely shifted for months. The plans for the start of a “bold” reset at Conservative Party conference, including scrapping the northern leg of HS2, have made no discernible difference to the ratings.
Sunak, however, remains confident that his strategy will work. He believes that next year he will deliver on the bulk of the five priorities that he set out in January and that the narrow path to victory remains, provided that the economy turns around and inflation falls. Senior Tories are discussing tax plans for the election manifesto — on the table are a major cut to stamp duty and abolishing inheritance tax — and the hope is that once people have more money in their pockets they will feel more favourably towards the government.
The economy
The prime minister appears on course to meet the biggest pledge of his five priorities: halving
inflation. When he made the commitment in January inflation was at 10.1 per cent. It is now 6.7 per cent and expected to fall further.
He can also argue that he has delivered on his second economic pledge, to improve the economy, albeit marginally. The economy has grown by about 0.5 per cent since January, but that growth has been sluggish. Of greater concern is his pledge to get debt falling as a proportion of GDP. It has in fact risen from 95.3 per cent of national income in January to 97.8 per cent. To make the situation more challenging, debt interest payments have ballooned, leaving
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, with little fiscal room for manoeuvre in the autumn statement. Tax cuts, long-demanded by Tory MPs, are going to have to wait.
The difficulty for Sunak is that while there are signs of economic improvement — particularly with wages now rising faster than inflation — many people are still grappling with the cost of living crisis. The tax burden remains on course to reach the
highest level since the 1950s and soaring mortgage repayments are hitting ever growing numbers of households as they come off fixed-rate deals.
Sunak’s reputation for economic competence was seen by many of his supporters as one of his trump cards. That reputation, however, has taken a significant knock. According to YouGov, voters’ confidence in Sunak’s ability to manage the economy has fallen by 45 points, from a net +14 to -31.
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UK in ‘a horrible fiscal bind’ with no room for tax cuts, IFS warns
Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that huge interest payments on government debt will constrain both this government over the next year and whoever wins the next election. He said: “Relative to two years ago at best people are not going to be feeling better off and many people will feel worse off.
“On the plus side inflation is coming down and despite extremely gloomy forecasts we have grown. On some measures things have gone about as well as we could have hoped. It’s not all sunshine but it’s not a catastrophe.
“Everything’s sluggish, we’re at a sluggish level of stability.”
Rating: 2/5
Small boats
In January Sunak made a blunt pledge to “
stop the boats”. While there has, undeniably, been a significant reduction in crossings, that goal remains a long way off. The numbers crossing the English Channel have fallen by about a third in the past year, from 37,575 in the year up to October 2022 to 26,501 in the year to date, with much of that down to the success of Sunak’s enhanced returns deal with Albania. There has been significant progress in clearing the “legacy” backlog of asylum cases, with the Home Office on course to clear the 92,000 claims by the end of the year. This has in turn helped the government announce plans to
wind down the use of hotels, with the first 50 to close by the end of January and a further 50 by March.
The biggest test, however, is yet to come. The government’s pledge to stop the boats relies heavily on the outcome of a
Supreme Court hearing on the government’s Rwanda policy that is due to report back in mid-December.
If the Supreme Court gives the go-ahead — and it is a significant if — ministers believe that the first flights to Kigali with illegal migrants could take off in February 2024. This, they argue, will have a significant deterrent effect on people crossing the English Channel and create a major dividing line with Labour, which has pledged to scrap the policy.
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Rwanda plan: what could the outcome of the Supreme Court showdown be?
There are significant questions, however, about whether migrants will actually be deterred by the policy. Home Office officials have admitted there is insufficient evidence to work out whether the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money.
However if the Supreme Court rules against the government, and finds that the Rwanda policy is a breach of the government’s human right’s commitments, Sunak will have a fight on his hands. The right of the party is already gearing up, with
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, clear that Britain should leave the European Convention on Human Rights. If Sunak commits to doing so, however, he faces an internecine row that will split the Conservative Party.
Rating: 3/5
The NHS
In January Sunak promised to cut NHS waiting lists. At the time, there were
7.2 million people in the queue for routine treatment. Today, there are a record 7.7 million, and numbers appear to be continuing to rise.
The government’s strategy is two-fold. First, Sunak and Steve Barclay, the health secretary, argued that they have almost eliminated the number of people waiting for more than two years and more than one and a half years for treatment. Second, and much more bluntly, they blame
striking junior doctors and consultants.
The government is refusing to yield to the pay demands of doctors, particularly given that unions have suggested that they want pay rises of 35 per cent, although the British Medical Association has said it is willing to compromise. Before the strikes, ministers argue, waiting lists were beginning to fall. The pay demands of doctors, ministers argue, are akin to “blackmail”, especially given that other healthcare workers including nurses settled for far less in pay negotiations.
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Just like the miners in the Seventies, doctors versus Tories is becoming a fight to the death
However, going up against doctors in the court of public opinion is not straightforward. Polling shows that there is a consistently high level of support for striking doctors, especially compared to the government.
More broadly ministers point to reforms to speed up diagnosis, give patients more choice and boost training to show they are more than bystanders in the NHS. But they are also mounting a political counterattack by targeting Labour’s NHS record in Wales, where waits are often longer.
Rating: 2/5
The Rishi reset
Sunak’s plans for the next phase of his premiership are a work in progress. Senior Tories believe that they will begin to squeeze Labour’s lead in the polls at the end of the year as the economic outlook begins to improve.
Sunak attempted to begin setting out a more positive vision for the future at the Conservative Party conference, which included three major announcements: scrapping HS2’s northern leg and reinvesting £36 billion in regional transport projects; a phased ban on the sale of cigarettes; and overhauling A-levels.
The announcements, however, barely made a dent in the polls despite the expenditure of significant levels of political capital — Sunak was
savaged by predecessors including David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Theresa May over his decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2. Number 10 is said to have been left “bruised” by the experience.
Sunak is now relying on two big events this year to galvanise his premiership — the King’s speech on November 7 and the autumn statement on November 22. There are concerns that both will threaten to underwhelm, particularly given the economic constraints.
There is hope, however, for next year. Sunak is planning a big overhaul of his cabinet — with even Hunt, his chancellor, said to be at risk — and the government hopes that as the economy improves, migration will become a more significant dividing line with Labour.
Rating: 2/5
