Opinion: What Sort Of PM Will Rishi Sunak Be? We Have Big Clues

Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister of the UK in the 1960s and 70s, is remembered around the world for one sentence: "A week is a long time in politics."

Some weeks are longer than others; some eras are full of long weeks. The current era of British politics is so accelerated that one frequently has to go back to the 19th century, or earlier, to find precedents. Rishi Sunak is the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812; 2022 is the first year of three different PMs since 1868; Sunak has reached the highest office after only seven years in Parliament, the most rapid ascent since William Pitt the Younger, who became PM at the age of twenty-four, in 1783. Liz Truss' tenure broke all records for brevity. 

To the rest of the world, Britain in general and the Conservative party in particular currently embody not acceleration but chaos. There is widespread excitement in India about the appointment of a Hindu, Indian-origin, son-in-law of Bengaluru, but students of political history might also be reminded of our own recent era of chaos or acceleration. Between 1989 and 1999, India had five general elections and seven different Prime Ministers. Liz Truss may have "lost to a lettuce", but her tenure was three times as long as Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 1996 stint.

Yet, India in the 1990s was a youngish democracy with dozens of parties; Britain is "the mother of parliaments" with a stable, century-old, two-party system. India's chaos came from the failures of successive governments to find a working majority; the Conservatives are less than three years removed from a landslide victory. And we are speaking here of what is, by more or less any definition, the world's oldest and most enduring successful political party. What happened?

The usual one-word answer - Brexit - is both true and insufficient. It is necessary to go further back. In the past 25 years, Britain's governments have chosen to pursue a series of constitutional changes, each of which, whatever their justifications, have had a shared consequence - the weakening of parliamentary sovereignty. Devolution of power to elected assemblies in Scotland and Wales; House of Lords reform; the creation of a Supreme Court; the election of party leaders not by MPs, but by party members; holding referenda on electoral reform; Scottish independence; and finally, Brexit. In every case, power traditionally wielded by Parliament in Westminster has been shared or outsourced. 

Each of these cases can be debated on their merits. But what is remarkable is that a centuries-old constitutional order has been remade or unmade with hardly any public discussion, or indeed an acknowledgment of what is going on. In all political systems, nothing is as difficult is reversing changes. Genies do not generally consent to returning to their bottles. Britain may find its way to a new stability, but it can't restore the old one.

Attempts by some on the Left to downplay his significance as Britain's first non-white PM are a reminder of why, on both sides of the Atlantic, centre-left parties have been losing rather than gaining minority voters. Here, too, the historical background bears spelling out. In 1968, Enoch Powell openly called for strict curbs on non-white immigration in order to preserve Britain's homogeneity. He was thrown out of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, even though Powell and his rhetoric enjoyed huge popularity with Conservative voters as well as voters they hoped to attract. The sacking of Powell cost the party at least one election. In the long run, however, it meant that unlike the Republicans in the US, or indeed the BJP, the Conservatives became a party that welcomed minority candidates, despite the continued prevalence of racist attitudes among sections of the party's membership. Hindu and Sikh immigrants from East Africa, like Sunak's parents, have been loyal Conservative voters for some time. 

This is the background to the chaos of 2022, and to Sunak's rise. But what sort of Prime Minister will he be?

Ideologically, Sunak is hard to pin down. His Goldman Sachs/hedge fund background lead some to assume him a low-tax libertarian, but in practice, he has been both a willing big spender (as Chancellor during Covid) and the leading Conservative advocate of fiscal prudence. He supported Brexit but is distrusted by the party's Brexit wing, the European Research Group.

James Forsyth, political editor of The Spectator and one of Sunak's closest friends, describes him as deeply committed to fiscal responsibility and to the view that every decision involves trade-offs. It is certainly true that during his failed leadership campaign of only a few months ago, Sunak distinguished himself by acknowledging the existence of trade-offs, and the need for economic prudence. 

In doing the first, he contrasted himself not only with Liz Truss, but with 25 years of British politics. The first person to imagine away trade-offs in British politics was Tony Blair, who styled himself as the candidate of all things to all people-pro-business and pro-welfare, patriotic and internationalist, "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime". Blair was the sort of politician who emerges in easy economic times. His wishing away of trade-offs delivered two landslide victories, but eventually curdled into a cavalier disregard for consequences. This disregard led tragically to Britain joining the American invasion of Iraq, and to Britain supporting the expansion of the EU from 15 to 27 members.

In the abstract, a return to the politics of trade-offs - to being serious about consequences - is to be welcomed. But what ultimately matters is not acknowledging the existence of trade-offs, but which side of the trade-off the politician chooses. Many fear that Sunak's version of fiscal responsibility will turn out to be a cruel sequel to the austerity of the Cameron/Osborne years, gutting the welfare state in the name of balancing the books.

And, on the most important issue of his career, Sunak backed the side of fantasy rather than prudence. His career benefited - without his backing Brexit, he would not have risen so rapidly to the Chancellorship under Boris Johnson, and would not be PM today. His first major act as PM was to re-assert his Brexit credentials by bringing back Suella Braverman - like Sunak, the child of Indians who migrated to Britain from Africa - as Home Secretary.

Britain's Opposition have openly accused Sunak of having done a deal with Braverman: her job back in exchange for her support for his prime ministerial bid. His sympathisers insist he was only trying to unite a bitterly factional party. Yet a third interpretation may be the most worrying - that, on the major issues of the day, Sunak and Braverman actually agree.

By sacking Enoch Powell, half a century ago, the Conservatives enabled a future where they could be led by the children of precisely those people Powell wanted to keep out. Yet you would struggle to find a more Powellite politician than Suella Braverman. In 1970, Powell identified three threats to Britain - socialism, European integration and immigration. Suella Braverman's politics could be neatly defined as an obsession with precisely these three enemies. Her public and private conduct shows that whatever her heritage, she is no friend to India.

In the short term, Sunak's appointment has reassured the markets. Whoever the PM, a Conservative defeat in the next election is now all but certain; of the available options, Sunak is probably best placed to limit the scale of the losses. For all that, his resurrection of Braverman suggests that he represents continuity - with the projects of austerity and Brexit that have defined the past 12 years of Conservative rule. Those projects have delivered a poorer, more unequal, more divided Britain. A Britain that has never been less ambitious on the world stage: one of the first victims of Sunak's axe will be the already-shrunk foreign aid budget. A Britain that may have a Hindu Prime Minister, but is less and less relevant to India.

(Keshava Guha is a writer of literary and political journalism, and the author of 'Accidental Magic'.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.