Tories face ’embarrassment’ of Sunak’s broken promises
There’s an important anniversary coming up for Rishi Sunak next week. But it’s one the Prime Minister probably wishes voters would forget.
On Thursday it will be exactly a year since he made “five promises” to the British public: “Five pledges to deliver peace of mind. Five foundations, on which to build a better future for our children and grandchildren.”
But only one of those five commitments that he made on 4 January 2023 has been unambiguously met. Inflation has halved. But progress on growing the economy, cutting NHS waiting lists, stopping small boats illegal immigration, and reducing national debt has been, at best, tentative.
A Tory backbencher admits the failure could be seen as an “embarrassment”, if only in the short term. And it comes just as the final countdown begins to the biggest test of Mr Sunak’s political career – the next general election.
Can he use his pledges to prove to voters he is making progress on issues they care most about – or has he set himself a trap?
The Tory MP told i the PM was right to hone in on these policy areas but questioned whether they were ever realistic.
“Quite why they chose to say “stop the boats” rather than something actually achievable I don’t think anybody knows, but I think they were the right things, in general, to focus on,” they said.
“The problem is the inflation is now well below half and the economy is technically just about growing but not a lot. And waiting lists are down and small boats are down but not enough. So we haven’t delivered.”
They added: “If you were going to be a Prime Minister whose mantra is ‘I will deliver not just promise’ then it has not worked so well.”
The consensus among Westminster Conservatives seems to be that slow but steady progress has been made on the economy but huge challenges remain for Mr Sunak around the NHS and small boats.
There is little optimism that the emergency Rwanda legislation, designed to force through the Government’s plans to deport asylum seekers to the African country, will be passed in full in the coming months.
Despite the legislation clearing its first Commons hurdle, Mr Sunak is facing threats from his own MPs who are poised to derail it when it returns to Parliament.
According to a Tory insider it was “never going to be realistic” to stop the boats entirely. Mr Sunak should have, instead, promised to lower the number of crossings, they argue.
Meanwhile, with more junior doctor strikes planned for next week, the NHS pledge is unlikely to become easier to meet.
There is little optimism across Government, or in the British Medical Association (BMA) union of doctors, that the action will be called off.
The two sides are in a stalemate that has prevented them from continuing negotiations, and officials’ attention has turned instead to how to handle the impact of the walkout rather than to prevent one taking place.
BMA sources said there remains hope that Health Secretary Victoria Atkins – who was appointed in November – is more proactive than her predecessors in wanting to draw a line under the strikes and reach an agreement with a final pay offer.
One source said the “tone from the Government has been better since the change of health secretary” with a “greater emphasis on making progress and being constructive”.
And i understands that after next week’s walkout, unless the union calls another strike, Government officials are prepared to continue talks with a final offer to be made to doctors.
But even if further strikes are prevented, Mr Sunak and Ms Atkins have a mountain to climb if they are going to clear the backlog and start to reduce waiting times to less than they were a year ago.
Recent NHS statistics suggested numbers on waiting lists were beginning to drop – partly due to the Elective Recovery Plan to cut the backlog that began last year. And i understands that before the latest round of industrial action, it had been plotted that the list would start to fall significantly in March.
There is still hope inside the Department for Health (DHSC) that that trajectory can still continue. But a lot of complicating factors remain for the Tories – including the timing of the general election.
Sources suggested that a spring election would make it challenging to show progress in the NHS because it would be coming off the back of winter, when pressures are usually very high.
The same problem, reversed, applies to Mr Sunak’s promise to stop the boats. Tory sources seem to concede that the Rwanda plan has not worked out well – but the fact that crossings tend to be higher in the summer months would not be ideal preparation for an election later in the year.
Scarlett Maguire, a director at JL Partners political researchers, said the latest polling data, from the Autumn, shows “public faith in [Sunak] achieving the five pledges deteriorated”. This is, in part, because “their faith in him is deteriorating,” she said.
Rishi Sunak’s five pledges
Halve inflation in 2023
Achieved ahead of schedule. Inflation was at 10.7 per cent when Mr Sunak made his promise. Figures released last week revealed it had fallen to 3.9 per cent by November.
Grow the economy
The latest figures, for October, suggest the economy has been flat in 2023 – increasing fears of a recession and dampening hopes of growth. The pledgehas been made more difficult by the Bank of England increasing interest rates as it tried to control inflation.
‘Make sure our national debt is falling’
The Government is aiming to reduce debt as a proportion of GDP. This month Mr Sunak was criticised by the statistics regulator for saying debt was falling when it was actually rising. Latest official figures show that in November, debt was around 97.5 per cent of GDP – 1.8 percentage points higher than in November 2022 – and “remains at levels last seen in the early 1960s”, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Cut NHS waiting lists
The overall number of cases waiting for non-emergency treatment in England was 7.71 million in October – down 40,000 from September but higher than the 7.21 million at the start of the year.
Stop small boats
Mr Sunak promised to “stop the boats” in his crackdown on illegal immigration. Part of the plan to do this is via the Rwanda deportation plan which has been beset by delays and legal challenges. The number of boats is falling but they have not stopped. As of 26 December, 29,437 people had been detected crossing the English Channel in 2023.
“It will be interesting to see whether that has changed now that inflation is falling. I think that could change quite dramatically if people start being able to get cheaper mortgages again than last year,” she said.
“And economically speaking it is probably one of the arguments against a spring election because, if you are waiting for people to feel the benefits of mortgages, it is more likely to be felt towards the end of the year.”
She added: “One of the counters to that is that obviously the stop-the-boats pledge formed a centrepiece of their strategy and it looks very messy because of what happened with the Rwanda plan.
“Public faith in that seems to be very low, and those crossings tend to increase over summer so they may not want to wait for that.
“On the NHS – it is one of those things Labour will continue to leverage because it has declined since the Conservatives in power. Rishi is left carrying the can for what the public see is 13 years of mismanagement.”
The Tory backbencher said that in an “ideal world” the PM would end NHS strikes in the new year and keep the small-boat numbers falling – while wages continue to outstrip inflation – which would, at least, show voters “things are going in the right direction”.
They added: “Small boats are a challenge but they are down by a third so maybe there’s some progress there, whether that can be maintained we will have to wait to see.” As for the NHS: “You just have to pray that you don’t get a bad bout of Covid or some really cold weather.”
They added that there was no point worrying about missed pledges: “The key thing is to deliver the best possible job on making people feel better off.
“Whatever the individual words of the pledges are, we have to look like we’re delivering on all those issues. We all need a clear run when everything’s working smoothly and going in the right direction…Otherwise it’s going to be a difficult year.”
