The Tories after Sunak's Coronation

It was a hard fought election, except it wasn't. With Boris Johnson realising the game was up before it started, Rishi Sunak finds himself appointed our new Prime Minister. And I, for one, am glad. This is because Penny Mordaunt is an unknown quantity as far as the public are concerned, but has always stood out as a relatively charismatic, competent, and normal figure - a rarity among the Tories, and the sort of politician a repeat of the Ruth Davidson strategy would benefit. Danger averted.

Unfortunately for Sunak, his first public appearance as Prime Minister "elect" was as wooden as anything Liz Truss attempted. But does this really matter? From the standpoint of the ruling class, there are three things that do. That Sunak will have a becalming influence on the markets, which appears to have been the case. The second is a programme that will make everyone but the British bourgeoisie pay for the crisis Truss's idiotic budget touched off. And third, he has to unite the party. In his closed speech to the 1922 Committee, he said the Tories were facing an existential crisis (yes) and needed a government that brings on the Tories' warring factions. A move that already shows a better handle on political realities than his predecessor. And, according to those present, there was a real desire for unity. Maybe there was for those who were there, but what about the dozens of Tory MPs who were not?

As discussed many times in recent weeks, managing the Tory party was never going to be easy for whoever came next. Johnson would have produced an absolute meltdown as the briefcases took their briefcases away. Mordaunt might have put noses out of joint because she did not command a majority among the parliamentary party, while Sunak lies between the two. Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman positioned themselves for jobs with declarations of support for him, suggesting both prefer ministerial office to impotent backbench posturing. But while reaching out to some on the right and including them in the cabinet is smart politics, there are others who won't be reconciled. There are the die-hards like Nadine Dorries, who (rightly) observes that Sunak lacks a popular mandate of any kind. While her relationship to Johnson seems anything but healthy, she is channelling an energy welling up from thousands of members who, not unreasonably, aren't taking kindly to an imposition of the candidate they comprehensively rejected. Indeed, the warning from the Bow Group that tens of thousands will leave the party is credible. How much this feeds through into the wider parliamentary party to cause Sunak trouble remains to be seen, but you can be sure it won't be long before Andrew Bridgen calls on him to step down.

A bigger problem is with Sunak's programme. We don't know how much of Jeremy Hunt's mini-budget he plans on sticking with, but given his desire to calm the money markets' animal spirits it's unlikely there will be many (if any) changes before this Friday. If there are, the policy direction will be regressive as per past behaviour. The failure of Johnson's levelling up wheeze was largely because Sunak was uninterested in using the state to drive regional economic development. It was Sunak - the wealthiest MP sitting in the Commons - who pushed for clawing back £20/week from Universal Credit recipients. Sunak oversaw the increase in National Insurance and had to be forced into offering a energy price relief. If anything characterises Sunak's politics, it's a determination to reverse politics to the time before Covid and Corbynism and get people into the habit of not expecting anything from the state. He wants to close the popular political imagination and scrub out the hopes and the memory that government can do things, like abolish homelessness, and provide a better welfare settlement - if it was minded to.

Sunak's mutterings about "economic choices" suggests another round of cuts are at hand, but this is where he could hit the buffers. The acquisition of former Labour seats in 2019 has made a layer of new Tory MPs either sympathetic to impoverished constituents, or to the consequences of neglecting them. Those in and around the so-called Northern Research Group will not be favourably disposed to more cutting, while the ERG/Johnson hold outs might find common cause around defending "levelling up". Sunak could avoid implementing another round of cuts if he chose. No one is forcing him to give billions of state cash to energy generation and supply, but there is an Overton window to be slammed shut and the politics to be managed. If this week shows this is his primary concern, it won't be long before the 1922 Committee's call for unity is ripped apart by the gnashing of teeth and chaos descends once more.

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