To show “the real Rishi” to the public, the Conservative Party is certain. Since becoming prime minister over a year ago, Rishi Sunak has yet to establish his identity in the eyes of the British people. He succeeded two strong personalities: Liz Truss is one of the most peculiar persons who have occupied high office, and Boris Johnson is the centre of attention wherever he goes. Sunak also received such a complete mess as an inheritance that he had to spend the majority of his time organising and maintaining the Downing Street equipment. He continues to be a fog to most voters.
Prime leaders typically have years to acquaint the public with themselves. As the opposition’s leader, they serve their sentence. They represent their party in a general election with all the glitz and glamour it entails: a manifesto outlining their political philosophy, a leader’s debate, and a horde of media working around the clock to cover you. A deus ex machina, Sunak.
The Truss government collapsed so dramatically that the party installed Sunak without even going through the procedure of electing party members or consulting the nation. He participated in his first Prime Minister’s Questions session on the day he took office due to the pandemonium. Prior to that, his ascent had been so quick that he had little opportunity to develop a political persona: After a career in banking, he made his way into parliament in 2015. He did not want to spend decades walking from one unwinnable seat to another and getting to know the party and its supporters. He was the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool took office in 1812 at the age of 42.
Sunak is thus practising politics backwards by making an appearance in front of the general people after assuming the position of national leader. With an election possibly occurring as early as the spring, Sunak’s inner team, which consists of Isaac Levido, his political advisor, Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, and political secretary James Forsyth, is determined to enhance the public’s perception of the prime minister through standout policies and significant speeches. There is a certain amount of defensiveness in this: The one thing that the majority of people know about him is that he is extraordinarily wealthy, an impression that has been enhanced by press leaks about his sporting £335 ($409) trainers, likely from other candidates for the Conservative throne.
for instance. However, there is also a bold plan: The Party’s brain trust understands that making the election as presidential as possible is the only way to win when you are 15 to 20 points down in the polls. You are doomed if you concentrate on the Conservative Party’s destructive brand. You might be able to pull off a surprise if you make the election a contest between Sunak and Keir Starmer.
Thus, there will be a tonne of schmaltz with a Sunak theme in the upcoming months. How he enjoys sharing breakfast wraps from McDonald’s with his daughters. How he has supported Southampton Football Club his entire life. How he is a workaholic and consistently works late into the night. Sunak will also be the target of a barrage of personal attacks because Labour sees him as its best asset. The combined wealth of Sunak and his heiress wife Akshata Murthy is thought to be £529 million. When he leaves his lofty office, he’ll just saunter back to California. When compared to Starmer’s true passion for football, a reputable Labour source even doubts his genuineness. What is the basis for these claims?
The most crucial thing to understand about Sunak is that, in a field increasingly controlled by experts in deception and manipulation, what you see is what you get. David Cameron, according to a longtime Tory observer, was only extraordinary in that he was so ordinary: He attended Eton, Oxford, and the Tory Research Department, and he held the conventional beliefs for someone in his demographic (liberal on social mores and pro-free market economics). The same is true of Sunak, although this time immigration rather than class is the essential component.
. His parents were model immigrants with high aspirations; his father was a doctor and his mother a chemist. They worked hard to put money aside to send their kid to Winchester, the top intellectual institution in Britain. In the postwar era, this was the Jewish narrative, and it is the Hindu narrative now.
His conservatism is also a part of the “what you see is what you get” philosophy. Since Iain Duncan-Smith, Sunak is the most staunchly conservative prime minister that Britain has seen. Instead of leaning to the left of the group, he does it to the right.
Sunak is a fiscal, economic, and social conservative, making him the complete package. He vehemently opposes using tax dollars for government spending. He spent more than £400 billion during the Covid-19 outbreak, suspending his ideals and saying that this was “not a time for ideology and orthodoxy, this is a time to be bold.” However, once the worst was passed, he attempted to restore order.
Due to his disdain of Johnson, who never saw a large project that he didn’t want to support, their relationship was always tense. It also served as the motivation for his most contentious move to date: With the destiny of the Birmingham-to-Manchester section in doubt due to his decision to cut investment on the high-speed rail line (HS2), which was intended to connect London with the North, he will attend the Conservative conference in Manchester. Sunak stated to a reporter in November 2020 that he wanted to “take Johnson’s credit card away.” Now, he appears to be taking away the country’s credit card without regard for the immediate political consequences or, as his detractors would have it, the long-term harm to the nation’s competitiveness.
He stated that public spending should never go above 37% of the gross domestic product in his first speech to the legislature. He thinks that the purpose of wise economic policy is to reduce the weight of the state so that “wealth creators can flourish.” Johnson, Covid, and the effects of Trussism on the economy consistently thwarted this goal. He is now, however, in a stronger position to revert to his fundamental outlook. Theresa May’s manifesto from 2017 focused on eradicating inequities, while Johnson’s from 2019 focused on completing Brexit and moving up the political food chain, and Sunak’s will revert to Thatcherite themes about fostering entrepreneurship.
Sunak has a natural tendency towards conservatism in society. He doesn’t just stand in sharp contrast to Johnson, who has nine kids from various women. He stands in stark contrast to the Conservatives of Cameron’s generation, who felt the need to promote their free-spirited beliefs. He has no qualms about calling a woman “an adult human female” and used his position as British premier to thwart the Scottish National Party’s proposal to change the law to recognise gender identity without a medical diagnosis for anyone over the age of 16.
A brochure he authored for Policy Exchange in 2014, before he was elected to parliament, titled “A Portrait of Modern Britain,” which praised his own group, British Indians, for their dedication to family, education, hard work, upward mobility, and property ownership, provides a good indication of his beliefs. It is implied that what worked for a group of ethnic people who, for the most part, arrived in the nation with nothing should also work for the rest of the nation.
Given how simple his opinions are, letting Rishi be Rishi is a riskier tactic than you may imagine. Many British grandees, even grandees of his own party like George Osborne, were enraged by his misgivings about HS2. Having socially conservative opinions can enrage social liberals, who are not so much overrepresented as completely dominant in the media. However, the Tory Party is forced to take a chance and let Rishi be Rishi because the Labour Party has been leading by double digits in the polls ever since Sunak gained office.