Iain Macleod, the shortest Chancellor of the Exchequer in British history (June 20-July 20, 1970), had time to utter a brilliant phrase before his sudden death: “Socialists plot their plots, liberals dream their dreams.” meanwhile we Conservatives do the work that needs to be done».
With Boris Johnson (an authoritarian populist) and Liz Truss (a libertarian), the tories they abandoned those papers and allowed themselves to dream crazy stuff like Brexit or tax cuts. With Rishi Sunak – a prudent and soporific accountant, with a nourishing but not exciting Disney-like smile – they returned to that role of effective managers to which Macleod referred, and to try to solve the infinite number of problems accumulated in twelve years of conservative government which created a dysfunctional country, plunged into chaos, with a shattered economy, a broken territorial balance and so much social tension that there are strikes every day. Like in the late seventies.
Sunak will not lack work in the two years he has at his disposal before the next elections, a period he himself realizes is too short to right the wrongs and for the voters to recognize his merits. But in addition to delving into the details and seeking pragmatic solutions to thorny issues such as immigration, the poor state of public health or chronic homelessness, the prime minister needs an identity.
She tried presenting herself as a male version of Thatcher, but it didn’t work; as a younger edition (but equally boring and without falling asleep or having memory lapses) of Joe Biden; or as the English alter ego of Emmanuel Macron (both technocrats, former finance ministers, fortysomethings, ready to compromise, with fragile majorities and experience in the banking sector of Goldman Sachs and Rothschild).
Shares a policy with the French president fluid which allows them to exercise themselves almost like socialists on certain issues (Sunak has raised taxes and social benefits, challenging the dogma Tory ), and as conservatives in others. Also tolerance for a certain amount of corruption in their parties, and a pragmatic attitude that has led them to backtrack on issues such as the retirement age reform in France or planning laws in England. That said, the Downing Street incumbent is very much to Macron’s right and Eurosceptic, even as he realizes that Brexit is not working and is hampering economic takeoff.
Sunak wants to be to Johnson what Biden is to Trump, despite the age difference, an adult in politics rather than a teenager, however gluttonous he may be, at the head of a divided party and a polarized society, which above all foresees a boring stability. The hope of both is that people, tired of the excesses of their predecessors, want a dose of boredom. Being boring is sexy.
Conservative Sunak would be the other side of the mirror in which Democrat Biden looks. But, for the moment, the confrontation has not materialised, neither with the US president – at the other ideological pole – nor with the French, nor with his admired Thatcher. Far more dangerous for him is to be seen as a new John Major (serious, but swept away by the economic crisis), a new Gordon Brown (definition of anti-charisma), Edward Heath (who has lost his grip on the unions) or James Callaghan –his real nightmare–, which fell after the winters of discontent of 1978 and 1979, when a wave of strikes to demand wage increases lost two million days of work and paralyzed the country.
The winds of political transition often come before the storms. Major’s “classless society” anticipated Blair’s meritocracy, Brown’s cuts anticipated Cameron’s austerity, and Callaghan’s monetarist measures anticipated Thatcher’s. The parties that are about to hand over power adopt the ideas of their rivals, in a vain attempt to survive. like now the tories with the profit rates of energy companies, a reflection of the new times. The UK’s economic model since the 1980s – low taxes, low interest rates, low inflation and low wages – is in crisis, and ultra-liberal Sunak admits that “the market has its limits”. Thatcher never did.
If Johnson was Danton and Truss Robespierre in the Brexit revolution, who is Rishi Sunak? He seeks a war with the unions, destroy Mike Lynch (who organizes rail strikes) like the Iron lady killed Arthur Scargill, reduced asylum claims, reformed health care and “out of responsibility” rejected the 19% pay rise demanded by nurses, narrowly managing the UK’s decline. But boring and pragmatic there is no one who beats the Labor leader Keir Starmer, who also knows how to steal policies from the right (hardness on immigration, flag, homeland, Brexit). And that can be a big problem.
