Thread: The British Prime Minister - for as long as there is a Great Britain

perceptive - we have the treasury and market makers running the country

Rishi Sunak isn't working

As the PM fails to address key issues and adopts a flailing media strategy, Labour shape the narrative and Britain withers

So, one thing is becoming clear: it isn’t going to work. That is, the plan for a year or more of calm, competent, administrative politics to reassure the country about the Conservatives before the election. Rishi Sunak’s instinct after the fall of Liz Truss was right and respectable: end the madness, try to bring party and country together. But it’s going to fail; and not only for the most obvious reason, which is that the Tory party won’t let it work.


This isn’t about rival personalities – not yet, anyway. Truss’s recent largely unapologetic and quite unhinged 4,000-word essay on “a very powerful economic establishment” – or, to put it more pithily, on economics – was impressive for its vim. But most Tory MPs accept that the tedious straitjacket of the real world cannot be discarded again. After her intervention there was eye-rolling, shrugging, no new rebellion.


Nor is the Boris Johnson restoration project an immediate threat. A familiar stench will billow from the parliamentary Privileges Committee inquiry into Johnson and partygate. The motion to set it up was passed in April 2022; it has already gone on for a ludicrous amount of time. But public hearings are close. Even if he circumvents the inquiry, there is the affair of the £800,000 loan to think about. And, knowing our Bozza, the next one, too.


Johnson retains a force-of-nature personality and an emotional reach no one else on the Tory side matches; but the hurdles look too high and wide for even him to chunter over. Should, by some remarkable chance, he emerge from the other side, dishevelled, apologetic and technically cleared, then Sunak will have to think further about how to deal with him. The offer of the party chairmanship would be an interesting one.


But no – it isn’t the likelihood of a putsch by one of his predecessors that will frustrate the Sunak strategy, but the plan itself. It assumed that the country could somehow come together on a policy of common sense that was beyond politics. It suggested that if a well-meaning boss was properly across the detail and worked very hard, there were technical clunk-click solutions to the problems facing Britain that sensible people would agree on: get inflation down, reassure the markets, secure the borders.


But we are still in the middle of ferocious post-Brexit politics, which insists that the Prime Minister, like everyone else, pick a side. Truss’s political programme was catastrophic, and the damage it caused to ordinary families goes on. But her impatience with the consequences of low growth and what you might call more bluntly British failure was completely natural and is shared across the political spectrum.


'Happy Valley Britain'

We are trapped in a world in which our economy is not producing the shared wealth to give us the lifestyle, public services, housing and security we think we deserve. Instead, we face the unravelling NHS, the waves of strikes, the boarded-up high-street shops, and a general air of dingy social dislocation you might call “Happy Valley Britain”. It isn’t surprising that revolutionaries of the Left and Right both dream of breaking out by resetting the rules entirely.


Truss has a tiny band of true believers. She makes her way around parliament as someone both in and outside her party, who proudly stalks through corridors of mockery. Her position is similar to Jeremy Corbyn’s.


The problem for mainstream politicians is that the world being addressed by these revolutionaries is indeed the world in which the rest of us live. You can reject radical market ideas and reject state socialist revolution, but you are still left with a struggling British economy, in which everything is, to use a technical term, a bit sh**.


And the rest of Britain needs a plan that goes beyond waiting for inflation to come down and squeezing spending until it does. And that, unavoidably, means confronting Brexit.


It really does seem pretty binary: break free from the EU orbit; shred its accumulated mass of worker protection, food standards, and environmental and industrial regulations – more than 25,000 new laws since we left. Recover the vigour of the 1840s. Slash taxes.


Raw power of EU

Or, alternatively, accept that the raw power of the continental market bloc can’t be ignored and do what you can, short of joining it again, to keep trade with it flowing.


We know what the Tory Right thinks and we know what Labour thinks. But on which side does Rishi Sunak sit? He was an early Brexiteer, and has California in his DNA. But his Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was a Remainer who, after the referendum result – which he accepted – suggested a second referendum on the terms of the exit deal, which might have allowed us to stay inside the single market.


Time has moved on but we are close to a new confrontation with the EU, both over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit status and the separate matter of shredding the EU regulatory inheritance. In a pleasingly Gilbert and Sullivan touch, both the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill are stuck, squirming, in the crimson afterlife we call the House of Lords.


Will Sunak insist on the powers to override the Northern Ireland protocol his predecessor negotiated, whatever Joe Biden and the EU say? Will he go ahead with “sunsetting” EU regulations and creating a completely new British set of employment and environmental rights before 2024?


Strikes are crippling the UK

Strikes are crippling the UK CREDIT: Getty
If the answer is yes to both of those, then we can expect a higher import tariff regime and further economic problems in the years ahead, and a broadly happy Tory Right. If the answer is no, then our ability to attract investment and grow is enhanced, but the 1922 Committee may come for the Prime Minister.


Sunak has been deliberately trying to blur his position: for instance, Downing Street briefing the Right that the PM might leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to help crack down on migrants, and then reassuring leftish Tories that no, of course he wouldn’t. The idea, I suppose, is to keep everyone guessing – throw hard-liners a morsel of red meat in order to make them swallow a compromise on Northern Ireland, or whatever.


And this is the part that won’t work. The Conservative Party and the country need to know who Rishi Sunak is if he is going to be a successful leader. He can’t be both a Treasury-orthodoxy managerial politician and a Brexit radical. There are huge choices ahead. They can’t be ducked. And they will need to be properly explained.


When people complain about Sunak’s lack of a vision, this is what they mean – which way are we going as a country; and is he really up for a big economic fight with Brussels? Labour under Keir Starmer has picked its side. Rishi Sunak has gone submarine.


Why? Has the Prime Minister, on some level, lost his nerve about the brutality of this political choice? Does he really know who he is yet, as a political personality? Is he at least half captured by the Whitehall and Treasury establishment? This is what matters, not the Westminster chaff of reshuffles.


Flailing media strategy

Sunak’s position isn’t helped by a misguided and failing media strategy. In pursuit of “quiet politics”, No 10 has avoided putting him and other senior ministers up for interview or public scrutiny, relying on staged factory visits and weird, bland social media clips instead. The result? His political opponents are shaping the narrative, day by day. If he has a message to get across, it isn’t reaching the national conversation.


Meanwhile, Downing Street is pursuing a double strategy of delay and diversion. The delays in the House of Lords are actually very useful for Sunak as he works behind the scenes for a breakthrough over Northern Ireland, knowing that “success” might be more politically lethal to him than failure.


Diversion comes from the ECHR briefings and policy over Channel boats and illegal migration. The Tory centre-left is already in pre-emptive revolt about it; Bob Neill, who chairs the Commons Justice Committee, told the Financial Times: “If Conservatives don’t believe in the rule of law, what do we believe in? Are we going to put ourselves in the same company as Russia and Belarus?”


But it is an obvious elephant trap for the Labour Party, which at some point is going to have to vote for radical changes to the law, or against them.


We are in a rumbling, ominous pre-Budget atmosphere on the big issues of growth, Europe and public spending. The Chancellor is under intense pressure to announce tax cuts at levels he has already said he cannot: the obvious dodge is for him to take his lead from Sunak’s time as Chancellor and announce tax cuts a year hence, before the election – tax cuts on tick.


Rishi-shaped hole


But at the centre of politics there is now a Rishi-shaped hole. He is a diligent family man of rectitude and charm, who badly wants to win. But since reaching Downing Street he has barely said an urgent or surprising word.


His five priorities have been halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing the national debt, cutting waiting lists, and laws to stop small boats.


The first three amount to “don’t be mad”, the fourth is futile until the NHS pay crisis is resolved, and the final one, if it means a new row with the EU, may end up in conflict with growth. They could have been (and probably were) chosen by a focus group. But Britain’s dilemma is real, big, and not captured by a little list. Rishi Sunak is not in trouble because of the Tory rebels. He is in trouble because he isn’t leading.

Rishi Sunak isn't working

Honestly numpt, is it news to you that the tory top brass is only interested in enriching itself?

Did the torygraph raise its subscription fee and leave you with just the grauniad?

Originally Posted by cyrille

Honestly numpt, is it news to you that the tory top brass is only interested in enriching itself?

no, thanks for your input.

The issue is that with debt and debt payments cutting into Govt funding the Govt now have to pay ever more attention to market reaction to policy - that's the point, not politicians financial interests - that has been the case for the last 3-4 decades.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Did the torygraph raise its subscription fee and leave you with just the grauniad?

it is from the torygraph you plank.

^ none of it matters so long as finance is everything. No leader is going to be able to deliver an agenda for the people with the debt monkey on their back and the debt interest will be paid in lieu of peoples lives. Now we wait until the world comes to its senses and decides that in the long term the Capitalist model has played out and serves only the rich. I am not suggesting Communism, far from it, but change is needed.

^
Agreed, the capitalist system only works for those at the top.

The US is a prime example of what can go wrong when Wall Street dictates to an elected Government

Originally Posted by malmomike77

Now we wait until the world comes to its senses and decides that in the long term the Capitalist model has played out and serves only the rich. I am not suggesting Communism, far from it, but change is needed.

Parts of the world have achieved to a great degree. Scandinavia and Swiss for example.
UK and US need to simply use thier example but doubt will happen until the majority finally gets "mad as hell and will take it anymore".

^ the current model relies on losers, those running balance of payments deficits - there is no capitalist utopia where everyone is a winner. Most running large CABs are backed by natural resources, take those away and the picture ain't rosie.

Country List Current Account to GDP | World

setting aside strikes, inflation, NHS waiting lists and the up and coming budget, Rishi has been focussed to resolving the NI Protcol impasse- trouble is even with labour backing forcing the vote through he'll still not get the DUP onboard which will mean the NI Assembly still won't sit.

Brexit: No deal on NI Protocol this week, predicts DUP MP

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson has said he does not believe a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol will be struck this week.

There was concern the UK government had "an attitude of defeat" in its talks with the EU, he told Sky News.

He said his party would not accept any agreement that would leave Northern Ireland subject to EU laws.

This comes as the EU's Maroš Šefčovič is set to speak with James Cleverly and Chris Heaton-Harris this afternoon.

The talks with the UK foreign secretary and Northern Ireland's secretary of state will take place via video-link.

Tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) Micheál Martin said it was time to put "power-play" aside to get a solution.

The UK and the EU have been in talks for more than a year to try to resolve issues with the protocol, a controversial set of post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland.

Sources have suggested a deal could be sealed this week, with momentum having built towards that at the end of last week.

But it now appears to be unlikely that be anything will announced until the middle of the week at the earliest.

Micheál Martin says Rishi Sunak has taken a "problem-solving approach" to the protocol
Speaking in Brussels on Monday, Mr Martin said the pace of negotiations had not slowed in recent days.

"What's very important is that everyone now from here on thinks about the people of Northern Ireland," he said.

"Not power-play, not politics elsewhere - I think the people of Northern Ireland have had enough that, of people playing politics with their future."

He met European Commission's chief protocol negotiator Maroš Šefčovič for an update on the negotiations on Sunday night.

Mr Martin appeared to suggest that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had taken a more "problem-solving approach" than his predecessors in Number 10 and that talks had moved at a "slower pace" under previous PMs.

Brexit: No deal on NI Protocol this week, predicts DUP MP - BBC News

Sir Keir Stammer the UK's next Prime Minister, unless the Tory's vote another replacement in for Rishi in the next two years has been detailing his 5 point pillar work strands commandments mission strategy. I can hear D:Ream's things can only get getter playing in the background.

Starmer announces Labour's five missions for government

Keir Starmer is delivering his speech in Manchester now.

Labour has jut released a document giving more details of its five missions. Here they are (bold text from original).

Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7, with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.


Make Britain a clean energy superpower to create jobs, cut bills and boost energy security with zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero.


Build an NHS fit for the future by reforming health and care services to speed up treatment, harnessing life sciences and technology to reduce preventable illness, and cutting health inequalities.


Make Britain’s streets safe by reforming the police and justice system, to prevent crime, tackle violence against women, and stop criminals getting away without punishment.


Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, for every child, by reforming the childcare and education systems, raising standards everywhere, and preparing young people for work and life.

Starmer says Tories have made UK’s problems ‘deeper and more painful’ as he sets out Labour’s aims - politics live | Politics | The Guardian

Say what you like about the Tories over the last 5 years, they have been a shambles but Sunak at least is living up to his reputation as someone who's very competent, driven and does sweat the small stuff. Be interesting to see what tack they take with the spring budget next week which may see them walk back on some austerity and anti-business taxes given the news about stagnation and companies choosing to leave the LSE in favour on New York.

Sunak is certainly busy, the emergency budget when he came in, the changes to the NI Protocol and now

Sunak and Macron summit: UK to give £500m to help France curb small boat crossings

The UK will give France almost £500m over three years to help stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.


The cash was announced at a summit in Paris between UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Emmanuel Macron, who said France would also contribute.


The money will go towards an extra 500 officers and a new detention centre in France, but this will not be fully operational until the end of 2026.


The UK had planned to pay France around £63m this year to tackle the problem.


This new package appears to at least double that amount, with the UK pledging £120m in 2023-24.


France will also step up its funding of enforcement but has not said by how much.


Labour's shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry accused the Conservatives of "lurching from one crisis to another with nothing more than their typical sticking plaster politics".


"Before Rishi Sunak sends even more money to the French authorities to tackle this crisis, he needs to explain what was achieved by the hundreds of millions we've given them before, and why small boat crossings continued to go up regardless."


Mr Macron praised the joint efforts of UK and French teams working to reduce small boat crossings.


Speaking at a press conference with Mr Sunak at the Elysee Palace, he said the team had prevented 30,000 small boat crossings and made 500 arrests in the past year.


Mr Sunak said the money would help "put an end to this disgusting trade in human life".


He added: "Working together, the UK and France will ensure that nobody can exploit our systems with impunity."


Mr Sunak said the new deal agreed by the two leaders will see 500 extra French law enforcement officers using "enhanced technology" such as drones to prevent Channel crossings.


The money will also go towards a new detention centre in France, adding to the 26 already in existence.


Downing Street said the detention centre would allow more migrants "to be removed from the French coast".


Mr Sunak has made stopping the boats one of his key pledges for his government.


However, if the centre is completed on that timetable it would not fully functioning before an election is due in the UK, which can be held no later than January 2025.

more: Sunak and Macron summit: UK to give PS500m to help France curb small boat crossings - BBC News

Originally Posted by malmomike77

Sunak at least is living up to his reputation as someone who's very competent, driven and does sweat the small stuff

Is he 'very competent, driven and does sweat the small stuff' to get the UK out of the ECHR? It's easy - just do it. Stop flouncing around like with Brexit, just do it. No-one is holding you back . . . no naughty ECHR banditry is stopping you.

Ah, but he can't . . . same reason Brexit is still a thing - without them you'd have less time to whine about the bad EU and have to own up to your own ineffectiveness.

Originally Posted by panama hat

Is he 'very competent, driven and does sweat the small stuff' to get the UK out of the ECHR? It's easy - just do it.

Yep, it's all a ridiculous pose to appease the loony wing in their party. And this is the second time they've pulled this stunt.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Yep, it's all a ridiculous pose to appease the loony wing in their party. And this is the second time they've pulled this stunt.

I was going to say it's all smoke and mirrors but for the Union Jack waving halfwits there's no need for even that . . . they're as gullible as they are dumb.

Originally Posted by malmomike77

Say what you like about the Tories over the last 5 years, they have been a shambles

How is that Brexit thing working out for you so far?

We seem to be in an era where the Treasury is dictating Govt policy through the purse strings and Civil Servants dictate how and at what pace policy is implemented and woe betide if you challenge them. I'd find the latest legal wokery hilarious if its implications weren't so serious, you can't pull up civil servants for being useless it seems.

Dominic Raab bullying report: Key findings at a glance

Dominic Raab has resigned as justice secretary and deputy prime minister after an investigation upheld some bullying allegations against him.


The inquiry looked at eight formal complaints covering Mr Raab's time as Brexit secretary under Theresa May, and as justice secretary and foreign secretary under Boris Johnson.


INQUIRY'S REMIT: As an independent investigator barrister Adam Tolley KC was asked by the prime minister to investigate the complaints, involving 24 people.


FINDINGS: Mr Tolley KC found a description of bullying had been met, whilst Mr Raab was foreign secretary and justice secretary.


But, in relation to complaints from his time as justice secretary, Mr Tolley concluded Mr Raab "did not intend by the conduct described to upset or humiliate", nor did he "target anyone for a specific type of treatment".


RAAB'S RESPONSE: In a resignation letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he said he was "genuinely sorry for any unintended stress or offence that any officials felt".


But Mr Raab said the inquiry "dismissed all but two of the claims levelled against me", adding that "in setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent".


Key report details


Raab was 'persistently aggressive' in meeting


One complaint highlighted in the report centred around allegations that Mr Raab acted "in a way which was intimidating, in the sense of unreasonably and persistently aggressive" during a work meeting while foreign secretary.


"His conduct also involved an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates," the report added.


The report said Mr Raab went "beyond what was reasonably necessary in order to give effect to his decision and introduced a punitive element".


Raab described work as 'useless and woeful'


As justice secretary, Mr Raab acted in an "intimidating" manner when delivering critical feedback on work on a number of occasions, the report found.


The report cites one example where Mr Raab described some work as "utterly useless" and "woeful".


The report concluded that his conduct was "abrasive" on some occasions which "feels intimidating or insulting to the individual but is not intended to be so".


His conduct was not "abusive" and behaviour was not "intended and specifically targeted", it added.


No evidence of misuse of power as Brexit secretary


The report found no evidence to suggest any abuse or misuse of power following a complaint made about his time as Brexit secretary in 2018.


"The deputy prime minister's conduct cannot be characterised as offensive, malicious or insulting," the report said.


"It was experienced as intimidating, in the sense of excessively demanding. I could not make a finding as to whether it was in fact intimidating in this sense.


Raab's gestures 'not intended to be threatening'


It was claimed Mr Raab extended his hand "directly out towards another person's face with a view to making them stop talking". Loud banging on a table and finger-pointing were also among the complaints.


Mr Tolley KC concluded there was "significant scope for misunderstanding" over the physical gestures and he was not convinced Mr Raab used them in a threatening way.


'No shouting and swearing'


The report found there was no "persuasive evidence" the minister shouted at individuals.


"I also conclude that he did not swear at any individuals or swear more generally," it added.


Disciplinary threat 'intimidating'


Mr Raab whilst at the Foreign Office, was said to have suggested those involved in a project had breached the Civil Service Code, so would have been in breach of their employment contracts.


Senior diplomat Sir Philip Barton told the investigation he had an informal meeting that he should threaten staff with the code.


The report found it had a "significant adverse effect" on a particular individual and Mr Raab's conduct was "a form of intimidating behaviour".


Mr Tolley concluded he did not intend to threaten anyone with disciplinary action, but should have known how his comments would be interpreted.


What else did the report find?


Mr Raab's style was, in his own words, "inquisitorial, direct, impatient and fastidious"


He is said to have worked long hours - from about 0730 until about 2200, Monday to Thursday, with constituency work on Fridays and regular weekend work

Mr Raab never labelled his accusers as "snowflakes", the report said

Dominic Raab bullying report: Key findings at a glance - BBC News

You mean you believe the account of that wanker Raab?

Really?

I'm more concerned with the civil servants claims. The office is high pressured and demands capable staff and if they can't take the drumbeat of the work and criticism then that says much about the civil service and the expectation of workers nowadays.

But that's clearly a 'yes'.

Because your concerns are prompted by his resignation letter.

A letter that just drips of his adversarial approach.

Fvck him.

I did enjoy how on 'Sky' they played a loop of him and Rishi applauding (probably the nurses).

But it looked like he was applauding himself for fvcking off.

I had to join the applause.

^ My take on the Key Report Details, you can interpret it how you wish, you usually do.

Originally Posted by malmomike77

^ My take on the Key Report Details, you can interpret it how you wish, you usually do.

As his opening statement in post #569 confirms.

Yup, how dare any minister demand high quality work from civil servants. You couldn’t make this shite up.

^ There's an art to getting high quality work from your team. Telling them their work is shite without coaching them is a short road to disaster.

This government should envy the Daleks for their empathetic skills.

And numpt's concerned about the robustness of the civil service.

While twitch just kind of pointlessly minces around.

Laugh...Cry...toughie.

Originally Posted by cyrille

This government should envy the Daleks for their empathetic skills.

And numpt's concerned about the robustness of the civil service.

Hmmm 6 hours consideration into that pearl, you'd be a shoe for a ministerial aide Symp if it wasn't for the fact you have demonstrated time and again how lacking in prose and personality you are is that why you plied your trade in non English speaking climes?