Check out Rishi Sunak’s Wikipedia page and the description is “Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”. Like all the best titles, it is simple – he is the CEO of UK Plc, the Editor-in-Chief, promoting Britain to the world, leader of the Tory Party. This last point might sound less than appealing, which leads some to speculate that he is tired of the job. I doubt it.
This week the battle commenced on the road to the general election. Sunak indicated that an autumn vote was a lot more likely than a spring one. Not earth-shattering news – but the reasoning tells us a lot about his method and the way he is likely to approach a campaign which, in likelihood, looks like one with a foregone conclusion and an end to a long Tory run in office.
Note that when Sunak spoke of the “working assumption” of an autumn poll, he was not absolutely ruling out other options. Caution and method have often been assets to him, albeit traits which can also lead to the view that he is a bloodless technocrat, who as one Treasury colleague put it when he was Chancellor… “thinks in spreadsheets”.
But he also thinks in longevity and as erratic as the past couple of years have been, staying in post past September would make him a two-year PM on the resume and the history books, which is better than a year and a bit.
Labour, which has a bit of a Trump-y tone underneath Sir Keir Starmer’s civility these days, pushed out comments about the PM “squatting” in Number 10 and asking (oddly) “what has he got to hide?”, which for me crossed the line into a generalised malevolence which politics would do better to avoid.
The implication is that the public is due an election, though this is more a preoccupation of Westminster insiders and activists than voters. They are keener to know how an upcoming budget in March will affect their interest rates and taxes and see an end to strikes paralysing the NHS and transport stoppages than fretting about which Thursday the ballot will fall.
Either way, the decision on election timing is Sunak’s alone and he feels that he is beginning to get a grip on the chaos among MPs and ministers which undermined his first year in office. You can blame him for appointing the fissile Suella Braverman as Home Secretary – but he did act decisively in getting rid of her when her rhetoric on the Israel-Gaza protests overstepped. That was a moment of danger with renewed talk of letters being written to the 1922 committee demanding Sunak’s head on a platter. But the recess has seen such talk abate. The return of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary was also a key moment: intended to show that Sunak can use his executive power to make the appointments he thinks useful.
The other factor to consider is the difference between losing big and losing less big. Given the risk of losing by a landslide, any mitigation Sunak can achieve will earn grudging respect and that is probably his real purpose – to take the edge off a Labour majority, opening up a way back for the Conservatives after the enforced respite of Opposition.
One factor too rarely discussed in a male-centric world is what does his wife, Akshata Murty want? She has had the short end of the deal since her husband entered Number 10. The daughter of an Indian industrial elite family and a tech entrepreneur in her own right, she found her “non-dom” tax arrangements under critical scrutiny and has now had to dissolve a venture capital company after it emerged that some of the businesses it funded benefited from Government grants under schemes started when her husband was chancellor.
The couple do sometimes look naïve when it comes to combining the investment habits of very high net wealth owners with a prominent role in public life. But this is not a pair who are dying to leave the place and focus on the joys of wealth and its accumulation.
So Sunak clearly believes he can leave a positive legacy – the focus and effort that went into the London AI summit vouched for that and so does that appointment one of the most important “quiet people” in the Number 10 machine. Franck Petitgas, a former Morgan Stanley executive, was chosen by Sunak last year to boost the UK’s appeal as a financial centre and his closest adviser on business strategy. Appointments like this take thought – and the promise of time to implement ideas. They are not moves of someone who is fed up with the job. So Sunak is a paradox: the short-stay PM who won’t be hurried out of the glossy black door. It’s one thing to know you’re on the way out in politics: another to leave.
Anne McElvoy presents the Power Play podcast for POLITICO
Rishi Sunak loves being PM – that's why there won't be an election until Autumn
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1
07.01.2024
Check out Rishi Sunak’s Wikipedia page and the description is “Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”. Like all the best titles, it is simple – he is the CEO of UK Plc, the Editor-in-Chief, promoting Britain to the world, leader of the Tory Party. This last point might sound less than appealing, which leads some to speculate that he is tired of the job. I doubt it.
This week the battle commenced on the road to the general election. Sunak indicated that an autumn vote was a lot more likely than a spring one. Not earth-shattering news – but the reasoning tells us a lot about his method and the way he is likely to approach a campaign which, in likelihood, looks like one with a foregone conclusion and an end to a long Tory run in office.
Note that when Sunak spoke of the “working assumption” of an autumn poll, he was not absolutely ruling out other options. Caution and method have often been assets to him, albeit traits which can also lead to the view that he is a bloodless technocrat, who as one Treasury colleague put it when he was Chancellor… “thinks in spreadsheets”.
But he also thinks in longevity and as erratic as the past couple of........
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