Sunak is no ‘saviour’ – we’re in this mess because of people like him

Yesterday evening I spent some time at Leicester’s massive and magnificent Diwali celebrations. And very enjoyable it was too – friendly, noisy and kaleidoscopic. As well as some tasty street food and Bangla beats, the celebrations are all about the triumph of light over dark, of good over evil.

I couldn’t help reflecting that Rishi Sunak seems to be regarded in some quarters as very much the embodiment of that spirit (well, apart from the people who think he’s just a backstabber). There’s a newspaper in India that thinks he’s a Diwali gift to the world; a dinky little glittering jewel of hope.

I can see what they mean, coming as he does after the depressing, gloomy miasma of the catastrophic Liz Truss interval. The pound leapt on his election, as if by divine intervention. But he is not some sort of light sent by the gods to illuminate our consciousness. He is not a political messiah. He’s just better than Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron – which really is not setting the bar high.

We should not forget, in other words, who is actually responsible for this mess we are in. It might have something to do with the political party that has been running Britain for the past 12 years. That would be the Conservatives (albeit naively ushered in by the Liberal Democrats). That would be the party that Sunak supported and was a member of for all those wasted years. Indeed, he was chancellor of the Exchequer and a Treasury minister for about three of them, and very much the creation and creature of Boris Johnson (until the supposed snakey “betrayal”).

Before that, Sunak was junior housing minister (with quite the portfolio of prime real estate), and a backbench Tory MP and activist. He supported every fad they indulged in – compassionate Conservatism, austerity, One Nation, Brexit, cakeism, the lot. He sat in cabinet with Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg and presumably thought that was all very normal. To be fair, he did warn about the Truss-Kwarteng “dash for growth”, but while the economy was being crashed he kept schtum and let her “own the moment”.

So Sunak basically went along with all the mistakes the Tories made in these past 12 years: they demonised refugees; they didn’t “fix the roof when the sun was shining”, because austerity didn’t work; they didn’t get enough homes built; they didn’t boost growth and living standards as they promised; they didn’t rescue the people “just about managing”.

They didn’t redress the “burning injustices”; they didn’t “build back better”; they didn’t have a plan for social care; they didn’t restrain climate change; they didn’t restore integrity and trust to public life; they didn’t get us through the pandemic very well (science did); and they didn’t “get Brexit done”, but instead botched it.

It was Sunak who oversaw the waste and loss of tens of billions of pounds during Covid, who insisted on the economically inefficient “eat out to help out” subsidy scheme (which probably pushed up the Covid infection rate) and who happily told Johnson and Dominic Cummings he’d dismantle the Treasury’s power for them (though he mercifully reneged on that).

He also, we now know, opposed the expert medical advice to extend a lockdown. He sat all the way through the scandals and sleaze of the Johnson government, including Partygate, and even got fined for breaking lockdown rules himself. Sunak backed Cameron, May and Johnson.

Above all, we shouldn’t forget that Sunak was, and presumably still is, an enthusiastic Brexiteer. It’s curious that so many of his enemies on the right encourage the misconception that he’s a Remainer and the tool of some “globalist” conspiracy to subvert Brexit and get the UK back into the single market. It’s Johnson who was the insincere Leaver, and Truss who changed her mind for political – not economic – reasons. But there we are.

Sunak’s Brexit has lumbered the UK with a unique obstacle to economic growth, by putting up trade barriers to our largest market, cutting off a vital supply of labour, disrupting supply chains and adding to the costs of British business. It also helped to collapse investment, which means lower growth in productivity, wages and living standards, including public services.

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The cuts Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are about to inflict on the nation didn’t just come from global trends, but from the self-inflicted harm of Brexit. They also derive from the mistakes made by Tory governments for more than a decade: from Osborne slashing infrastructure spending, to the waste and fraud during Covid (on Sunak’s watch), to the disastrous Truss mini-Budget.

Every so often, the Conservatives put some more lipstick on the pig (if you’ll pardon the expression – sorry, David) and pretend that they’ve just launched a “new” government, but it’s basically the same old faces doing the same old thing for their own benefit. Every so often we’re invited to forget their past record and pretend that when they change their leader we should give them the benefit of the doubt for their latest fresh start. “It’s different this time” are indeed the four most ominous words in the language.

Sunak is famously a science fiction fan, and knows all about Star Wars. Maybe he’s a bit of a Whovian too, which would be appropriate because his arrival is a little like when the BBC “regenerate” Doctor Who. They invite the viewers to believe in a sort of magic, rather than accept the more mundane truth that the actor doesn’t want to get typecast, or just can’t remember their lines any more.

Just think of it as Cameron morphing into May morphing into Johnson morphing into Truss morphing into Sunak – different styles and scripts, but the same old character doing the same old shtick in the Tardis with the sonic screwdriver. He hasn’t just dematerialised from another planet. Sunak is no saviour – we’re in this mess because of people exactly like him.