Without fanfare, Rishi Sunak celebrated six months in office this week. The prime minister is a man in a hurry. Taking over a party and a country in a mess, he has defined himself as problem-solver in chief. One senior Tory describes his operating model as “Rishi arrives; Rishi delivers; Rishi moves on”. He is, the former minister adds, “more a function than a politician”.
This is harsh. As a leader approaching a tough election, Sunak is showing significant political skill. Patently he can do the job. After the excitements of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, managerialism is no longer an insult in British politics. Fears over the public finances have calmed, while civility and trust is being restored to EU relations. Of course, some caveats are needed. Sunak is clearing up messes from his own government and policies. School strikes loom and he has lost three cabinet ministers in six months.
But with hard work, fiscal prudence and an eye for detail, the prime minister has restored stability. One cabinet ally says the defining image of Sunak is him sitting at the table “with the head of a government body and a large lever-arch file”.
And yet if the first truly post-Brexit premier has an overarching vision, it is hidden. He should be the man to bed-in the Brexit he supported — but after that upheaval, the country simply looks like a less efficient version of itself. After six months, what clues are there as to what Sunakism might be?
Contrary to Labour criticism, he does not look weak. Over issues such as tax cuts and post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland, he has shown political courage as well as tenacity in defying his party’s rightwing. Another argument is that he runs scared of his hardliners, as shown by his aggressive stance on illegal immigration or cultural issues. Yet there is no evidence that Sunak is uncomfortable with these positions.
Pragmatism tempers his politics. He doesn’t want the distractions of minor issues. Home Office aside, the most committed cabinet culture warriors have been kept well away from departments like education and culture. But one senior supporter says people have not understood the depth of “his social conservatism”. His easy manner, career in global finance and ethnic background might suggest a more cosmopolitan conservative, but the clues are there in his speeches. Sunak is open about his religious beliefs and embodies the family values of his upbringing.
The government’s hard line on small boat crossings is not only a political imperative but also one that Sunak uses to validate his broader support for skilled legal migration. In last year’s Mais lecture, he stressed that control would “rebuild public consent in our immigration system”. This pragmatism can also be seen in his foreign policy where, in a party dominated by China hawks, he has championed a modulated approach which seeks co-operation and economic relations where possible.
Even so, some Tories doubt there is a compelling vision. “Big leaders look to change the weather. He will not leave an ideological stamp on the country,” says one former minister.
It is true that since Brexit, Sunak does not have a consensus he wants to smash. Unlike Thatcher he has no corporate state to destroy; unlike Truss he doesn’t want to overturn an economic orthodoxy to which he subscribes.
Sunak’s economic views are clear. He is a Thatcherite with a growth strategy of raising skills and cutting regulations that stifle enterprise and investment. But, from net zero to levelling up, to his new science and innovation ministry, this instinct is often managerial and gradualist. He has funked planning reform, surrendering to the Tory nimbyism which has stymied both infrastructure and housebuilding.
Nor is the government willing to confront or address pressing issues of intergenerational fairness or policies and benefits that favour the old over the young. This is dangerous territory for a party so reliant on older voters, and unrealistic to expect before an election. But it is not even on Sunak’s agenda. Likewise, a smaller state requires government to do less but there is little thinking on significant welfare reform.
In as far as there is a larger vision, his north star is found in the values of his own driven but loving family, and then broadened out by Silicon Valley. Put crudely, Sunak believes that Britain will work best as a country of people more like him. People who work hard, acquire skills, are good at maths, who want to get on and do right by their family. It is a vision of a traditionalist, intensely patriotic, self-supporting, techno-optimistic, enterprising society. He calls it “a culture of enterprise”.
Sunak’s allies will reasonably point out that he has an election to salvage and that this is not the moment for blue-sky thinking. But the premiership is a succession of intractable problems. There is no respite and leaders must be able to look beyond the immediate.
A nation of Sunaks would not be the worst outcome for a country. But such ambitions are running up against huge demographic, geopolitical and technological forces, all pushing leaders towards a bigger, not smaller, state. And as yet there is no sign that his early political ideas have evolved into the transformational thinking necessary to rise to these challenges — the ones that demand more than hard work and a lever-arch file.