Why the Labour party is praying for the Tories not to vote for Rishi Sunak
There could be no grimmer epitaph for Boris Johnson’s Tory leadership than the list of his aspiring successors. On coming to power three years ago, he decapitated his party of talent. Like a new emperor fearful of rivals, he threw out the Hammonds, Rudds, Gaukes, Clarks and Greenings – anyone who offered an ounce of competence and dignity to his administration. Instead, the path to Downing Street is now crowded with a jostling rabble of second-raters. The party should narrow down its choices as swiftly as voting allows. Then Johnson must go.
The current auction of tax-cutting promises by the various candidates illustrates the evils of the “primary election” approach to democracy. It is Johnsonian populism without Johnson. Promises of lower taxes are supposed to garner votes. No matter that you sat in a cabinet that raised them. No matter that you have no idea how to cut spending – though George Osborne could tell you. No matter that you may have no intention of honouring the pledge. You are alumni of Academy Boris. You can say what you like, what looks good in a headline. You are the new politics.
These hopeful prime ministers were almost all responsible for the state of the NHS, the staffing chaos at airports, the collapse of the justice system and the impoverishing of local government. Crippling by Brexit, blasted by Covid and torpedoed by sanctions on Russia, they have struggled to sustain their party’s reputation for responsible economic policy. But as Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has remarked of the past three years: “Pretty much everything we could have got wrong, we got wrong.” He sees the current crises of inflation and living costs a result of this.
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