Is Rishi Sunak delivering on his five pledges?

On 4 January 2023, at the London 2012 Olympic Park, the prime minister gave a speech on “building a better future” that set out his five priorities for the year ahead. At the time, many commentators felt that some of these would be easy to achieve, and few predicted abject failure across the board. Yet the latter is what seems to be happening.

Like the pledge he made on his first day in office – “This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” – the five pledges on the economy, the NHS and migration are at risk of becoming an albatross around his neck.

So, as we approach the half-year mark, it seems a good moment to review Rishi Sunak’s promise to build “a future that restores optimism, hope, and pride in Britain”. (The precise text of the pledges is taken from the speech for the purposes of accuracy, rather than from the various bullet-point versions pumped out in the propaganda.)

‘First, we will halve inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security’

The rarely mentioned second part of this most important pledge has certainly not been fulfilled. Such has been the unexpectedly steep rise in interest rates, and thus in mortgage bills and rents, many families are far from feeling secure. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has succeeded in getting most lenders to exercise forbearance with distressed mortgage-holders, and has introduced a one-year moratorium on repossession evictions, but householders’ financial confidence remains at a relatively low ebb.

Yet without the Bank of England ramping rates up as much as they have since 2021, inflation might be even higher than it is. With the latest CPI stubbornly stuck at 8.7 per cent, and core, underlying inflation actually accelerating, getting the annual increase down to about 5 or 6 per cent is still a possibility, but progress is disappointing.

Marking it will be difficult because it’s not clear what precise benchmark will be used on 4 January 2024. Annual CPI inflation stood at 10.5 per cent in December 2022, and 10.1 per cent in January 2023, so inflation needs to be less than either 5.3 per cent or 5.1 per cent for a “pass”.

‘Second, we will grow the economy, creating better-paid jobs and opportunity right across the country’

“Creating opportunity right across the country” is a somewhat amorphous pledge, but it’s not the kind of thing a government presiding over stagflation can achieve in a year. Wages are still rising at quite a clip – about 7 per cent a year – but that’s still a cut in real terms. The number of people in employment has edged up, unemployment is low, and the UK will probably avoid recession in 2023 and achieve some growth. However, the outlook for 2024 is gloomier than previously thought. So even if Sunak passes this test, the economy might dip into recession soon after.

‘Third, we will make sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services’

National (public) debt actually rose to more than 100 per cent of GDP for the first time since 1961 last week, and with growth expected to slow next year, the prospects for tax revenues in 2024 will be correspondingly weaker. The most immediate threat to the integrity of this pledge is the way the cost of servicing this large debt has increased with interest rates. In that sense, the UK as a whole is in roughly the same position as anyone with a jumbo mortgage, and the result will be a squeeze on public services.

On the other hand, because of the sheer scale of the tax hikes imposed after the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget last year, tax revenues so far this year have been better than expected, and even left some room for some small giveaways in the Budget last March. But it will be touch and go as to whether the public finances will be marginally better by next January.

In his budget speech, Hunt asserted that the Tories are still on track to deliver this pledge, and predicted underlying national debt to be 92.4 per cent of GDP next year, peaking at 94.8 per cent in 2026-27, and only falling to 94.6 per cent in 2027-28 – obviously long after the next election.

‘Fourth, NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly’

Some good news here, as the Royal College of Nurses called off their strike action, which must be a help. On the other hand, the junior doctors are pressing on with their longest strike ever next month – a full five days from 13 July – and these strikes tend to lead to more cancelled appointments and procedures. There is also a ballot under way on industrial action by hospital consultants, again something that will inevitably make it harder for the NHS to catch up with its backlogs.

NHS trusts had to cancel 108,602 appointments and operations when junior doctors withdrew care for three days recently, while the total number of postponements as a result of strike action by junior doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and others stands at 651,232 since December.

In his recent interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Sunak correctly pointed to the fact that the number of people waiting two years for treatment was “practically eliminated” last year. However, he also conceded that the number of people on the NHS waiting list as a whole was growing, which he blamed on the pandemic. The backlog “was always going to take some time to work through”, he said, adding: “I’ve always said the overall waiting list was not going to come down until next year.”

A narrow fail seems the most likely outcome. The meagre consolation for Sunak is that the Conservatives were never going to win the general election on the state of the NHS.

‘Fifth, we will pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed’

Commonly subbed down to “stop the boats”, including by Sunak in his keynote address, this was always the most unfathomable of the five pledges. This is because it combined, in one politically lethal cocktail, a notoriously intractable policy area, things that are largely out of the control of ministers (civil wars, refugee flows, the weather), and an absolutist target that allows no “wriggle room”. If a single small boat turns up in British waters early next year, then the pledge will have been broken. And there’s little sign of the boats stopping.

Even Suella Braverman, a politician not given to niceties, has refused to quantify or define exactly what “stop the boats” means, and contents herself with saying the right things to the right of her party, and blaming lawyers and the Labour Party for the crisis, if such it is.

Indeed, Braverman’s shamelessness is a far better approach, given that her own department has just admitted that it is “not possible to estimate” if the proposed “illegal immigration” law will achieve its core aim of deterring those desperate enough to attempt to cross the Channel. Even if the Rwanda plan to deport migrants is deemed legal, it, too, will probably have little impact.

Unhelpfully, from the points of view of Braverman and Sunak, Home Office officials also say that “practical complexities” including insufficient detention capacity and a lack of deportation deals mean there is a “risk the bill will not be fully delivered”. The new measures also risk “unintended behavioural changes from migrants”, including people switching from small boats to lorries and visa fraud.

Sunak will certainly have his new laws in place, but there’s no obvious reason to suppose they will be transformative. Another failure looks likely, and one that will be the more painful because the promise could easily have been couched in more achievable terms.