Inflation figures were about to be published, expected to reinforce that the only one of Sunak’s five pledges he is actually delivering on, while the government was expected to pass two major pieces of legislation. One was the age-old ban on purchasing cigarettes which the Prime Minister had personally enforced so rigorously; The second was the government’s reprehensible plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda without processing their claims.
Oh, and there was also a surprise to be had – a new policy that would stop the public from focusing on Sunak’s crumbling government and instead force them to confront those who are actually responsible for the country’s ills. Who came across as people suffering from depression or anxiety.
None of this may be many people’s idea of a good week, but when you’re deeply unpopular in your party and the country, any week where you get something, anything is good, relatively speaking. , one is civilized.
It is perhaps indicative of the lack of confidence within Number 10 that the “good week” story had already been told – advisers must have felt that the only way to write any article in those terms was to look forward, because , predictably enough, the week it actually happened was nothing like the freaks might have expected.
Perhaps the best news for Sunak was that his controversial smoking policy passed, but more on that later. Inflation wasn’t exactly a disaster for the Prime Minister, but the issue showed the difficulty of trying to make rising prices the centerpiece of your proposal to voters.
When the official figure came out, it was 3.2% – certainly far short of the peak of inflation as energy and food prices soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But, as commentators had to explain, falling inflation doesn’t mean falling prices – it just means that while things are still getting more expensive, they are now doing so more slowly. The rapid deterioration of the situation is not something that inspires enthusiastic thanks from a grateful nation.
Adding to the disappointing moment is the fact that experts expected inflation to fall more than it actually did, meaning there was no big surge in the stock market as a result.
Also strange for the government is the fact that the UK’s official inflation target is 2% – so we’re still a long way from that. By cutting National Insurance twice, the government has injected more money into the economy (which increases inflation) just as the Bank of England is trying to use interest rates to take it out.
Therefore, with his failed strategy of using tax cuts for popularity, Sunak may have ruined any chances of the Bank cutting interest rates before the election. Hardly a great start to a “good” week.
This left the Prime Minister looking to the Rwanda Bill for comfort – although if he had not learned last year that Rwanda always disappoints there would be no hope for him. And indeed, there Is No hope for him.
The House of Lords proved more flexible than the government expected in its efforts to amend the bill – their resolve was reportedly hardened by briefing ahead of time that they would complete it within weeks.
Most media reporting suggested that the Lords were trying to “block” the bill, but in practice the final stage of the dispute between the government and the peers was limited to two specific objections: The peers wanted Rwanda to be a safe country. An independent panel should be formed to confirm this. place to send people, and wanted some specific protections to ensure that no one helping Britain in Afghanistan would be sent to Rwanda.
Once again, you are left wondering what counts as a good day inside Number 10: in order to get the Rwanda deal – which involved sending people, including legitimate refugees, thousands of miles away – you are left explaining that Why wouldn’t you do this in the most basic security demanded by peers.
And once it all goes away, you’ll have to face months of legal challenges, packing some vulnerable people on a plane for a few front pages.
Subsequently, Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, who is still an MP in her ruling party, gave a flurry of interviews to promote her new book – during which she suggested she would abolish the UN, the European Court of Human Rights and , the Human Rights Act, the Environment Agency, the Supreme Court, and many other institutions.
Without hesitation, Truss reminded the rest of the country about his disastrous 49-day premiership – and perhaps even reminded some people about when Sunak was in a head-to-head contest against this strange man, So he lost heavily.
The widespread coverage of the truce was so devastating that when Tory MP Mark Menzies’s truly strange story emerged TimesSome wags joked that the whip’s office must have put it out for the media to talk about anything but the truce.
It is perhaps a sign of how accustomed we have all become to Tory anarchy that Menzies Farago has been welcomed almost with a shrug. Times The story – many elements of which have been denied by Menzies’ team – included allegations of “bad guys” using campaign funds to secure the MP’s release at 3 a.m., spending thousands on “personal medical expenses”, giving the dog alcohol Includes feeding and more.
Westminster, weary of scandals, almost immediately began wondering how long it would be until the next, surely inevitable, by-election – although for now Menzies has relinquished the Conservative whip and said he will stand at the next election.
Lest there still be any questions as to whether Sunak and his government have really changed the situation, the answer was given quite definitively by Ipsos MORI when they published a poll which gave Labor a 45% lead and the Conservatives only 19% was shown.
This was a disaster just days before crucial local elections, in which the party is set to lose half of the council seats it is defending, and in which two important mayoral positions are at risk. If Andy Street loses the West Midlands and Ben Houchen loses Tees Valley, Tory MPs could once again go wild and oust another leader.
Cynical crackdown on people too sick to work is unlikely to convince Tory vaccinators, even if it matches the party’s traditional narrative that it is profit-makers, not rich tax evaders, PPE-fund-grabbing. and rent-raising landlords who have been encouraged by their peers. Parliament – who are bringing the country down.
The Prime Minister suggested that almost half of people deemed unable to work suffer from depression or anxiety – with a heavy implication, even in these supposedly enlightened days on mental health issues – that many should be working.
Except that his comments were based on a misunderstanding of the data. More than half of those medically unable to work suffer from depression or anxiety – about 1.35 million. However, more than 1m of them had depression or anxiety as a secondary condition, not the reason they contracted it.
Being ill for a long time in itself can be the cause of both. Either the number 10 is so incompetent that it doesn’t realize what the numbers mean, or it’s so insensitive that it doesn’t care.
All this failure makes Sunak’s decision to enact a law to stop smoking interesting. This is not traditionally Tory policy: both his immediate predecessors have publicly disdained it. Several cabinet ministers, including the ambitious Kemi Badenoch, are on record opposing it.
Sunak is hardly a soft Tory by background – his interventions during the pandemic went against his natural small-state political instincts, and reporting has shown that he was increasingly vocal in opening up against public health advice.
Why, then, did he spend so much of his dwindling political capital on pushing the legislation? His position on the issue was so weak that he allowed the measure a free vote, meaning serving ministers could vote against it without retribution.
In the end, Sunak succeeded in getting the support of more than half of his own MPs – more than 100 abstained and more than 50 actively voted against the government. In contrast, Labor and the opposition parties almost universally supported the legislation.
It is clear that passing anti-smoking laws did not help the craze’s precarious situation, and may have made it worse than before. This in itself is enough to answer the question why he brought it forward: it is the strongest evidence yet that Rishi Sunak has given up.
One way or another, Sunak will not be prime minister after a year. He will either be ousted by his own MPs in the next few weeks, or voted out by the voters in the next few months. He will undoubtedly leave Parliament soon after.
Sunak’s political career is at its end and he knows it, although he will try to gain popularity with idiotic speeches about “sicknote culture”.
The smoking law is his legacy: it doesn’t matter whether it’s actually practical, practical or in line with his ideology – by passing that bill, he can say he is the Prime Minister who ended smoking in Britain. , and by doing so he certainly hopes he can save his premiership from becoming an embarrassing footnote like Truss’s.
Some Tory MPs must have realized this too. Rishi Sunak is going through the motions, but he is someone who has already been investigated.