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Will Prime Minister Rishi Sunak make British politics any calmer?
The last three months in British politics have been some of the most tumultuous in the modern era. There have been three prime ministers in that time, government ministers have been in a seemingly never-ending game of musical chairs, there has been a near financial crisis, and so many government U-turns that it’s hard to keep up. And all of this has happened against a backdrop of the Ukraine War and Britain’s slow emergence from a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
Nevertheless, there are reasons why British politics might become calmer in the near term, making it easier for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to actually govern. The biggest recent challenges have been double digit inflation, rooted in spiralling energy costs, and rapid interest rate rises driving the UK economy into recession and pushing up the cost of government borrowing.
However, gas prices are already down by roughly two-thirds from their peak (albeit not yet for ordinary consumers), and if the Ukraine War is concluded soon, perhaps in early 2023, then the chief cause of the initial spike in prices will have been removed. When they fall, interest rates will follow, easing pressure on families with mortgages and potentially kickstarting economic growth.
The cost of government borrowing will also fall, reducing the need to cut public spending and/or raise taxes. Indeed, the cost of government borrowing has already fallen significantly with Sunak’s replacement of Liz Truss, whose experiment in debt-fuelled tax cuts for high earners and corporations led to the cratering of the pound.
In other words, Prime Minister Sunak may be the big beneficiary of the ‘things can only get better’ effect: Within the space of the next two years—meaning, before the next general election—many of the big economic problems facing the country will likely have abated, and he will be able to go to the electorate with inflation under control, interest rates significantly lower than the expected 6 percent under the Truss/Kwarteng plan, and the economy growing again.
Counting on that would be wishful thinking for Sunak though. This is because many of the problems his government faces have deep structural causes and won’t be solved by a change of personnel. Chief among these is that the US-led liberal international order within which the UK’s neoliberal political economy is embedded is fracturing in real time, due to a combination of escalating US-China tensions and Russia’s challenge to NATO in Eastern Europe.
On top of that, there is evidence that the public’s support for the kinds of neoliberal policies Prime Minister Sunak is likely to pursue is in long-term decline, and although the ongoing realignment of the electorate seemed to benefit the Conservatives in 2019, it looks increasingly likely that this was a fairly exceptional ‘Brexit election’.
A big challenge Sunak faces is devising an economic policy capable of simultaneously ‘Levelling Up’ economically struggling parts of the country while also cutting taxes in the medium term and retaining the City of London’s status as a global financial centre. Also relevant here is the challenge of figuring out Britain’s new place in the world after Brexit and preventing the breakup of the UK.
On top of that, Sunak inherits a deeply divided Conservative Party, a big chunk of which blames him for the defenestration of their former leader, Boris Johnson, and which is now used to serial rebellions. All of that spells one thing: British politics probably isn’t going to get much more boring any time soon.
Dr Christopher Byrne
Dr Byrne was formerly a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett.
