Rishi Sunak will gather with members of his governing Conservative Party on Sunday for what is likely to be their final party conference before the UK\u2019s next general election, which Sunak is currently projected to lose.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The Conservatives come together for their\u00a0annual meeting with little good news to celebrate. The party is trailing the opposition Labour Party in the polls by a significant distance.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Sunak has been criticized by moderates in the party for tacking to the right on key issues like\u00a0immigration\u00a0and\u00a0commitments to\u00a0reducing carbon emissions.\u00a0He is also being attacked from the party\u2019s right for what they perceive to be an anti-conservative approach to taxation and public debt.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As if Sunak\u2019s job uniting his party this week wasn\u2019t hard enough, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the leading economic research institute in the UK, published a report projecting that taxes will account for around 37% of national income by the next election \u2013 the highest level since\u00a0World War II.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Party conference season is an important\u00a0date\u00a0fixture\u00a0in the annual\u00a0British\u00a0political calendar. Taking place in the early\u00a0fall,\u00a0these jamborees are the principal forums for each party to outline its\u00a0priorities for the next 12 months.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
For the governing party, conference is typically a time when members rally around the leadership and unite against the opposition,\u00a0insulated from whatever is\u00a0happening in the wider world of politics.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This should be especially true as\u00a0an election approaches.\u00a0However, Sunak, who wasn\u2019t even\u00a0the Conservatives\u2019 leader\u00a0this time last year, has inherited a broken party that has been in power for so long it seems out of ideas and already preparing for the post-mortem and blame game that follows any election loss.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And factions on both the left and right of the party are already publicly criticising Sunak on a range of issues.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Examples coming into this year\u2019s conference:\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Former cabinet minister Priti Patel told British channel GB News on Friday that the tax burden was \u201cunsustainable\u201d before unfavourably comparing Sunak to tax-cutting former PM, Margaret Thatcher.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The Conservative-supporting Daily Mail\u00a0newspaper\u00a0ran a column titled: \u201cDidn\u2019t the Tories used to be party of tax CUTS?\u201d <\/p>\n
Sunak can also expect vocal criticism from the environmental wing of his party after\u00a0a\u00a0significant U-turn\u00a0last week\u00a0on climate policy. Sunak delayed a\u00a0planned moratorium on the sale\u00a0new\u00a0gasoline\u00a0and diesel cars\u00a0from 2030 to 2035 and pushed back on plans to phase out gas boilers\u00a0in homes.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Some\u00a0Conservatives\u00a0who support action on the climate crisis, not least former PM Boris Johnson, criticised Sunak, saying the UK \u201ccannot afford to falter now\u201d or \u201close our ambition.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Such a direct criticism of a sitting PM by a former PM is highly unusual. What makes it particularly painful for Sunak is that Johnson is at the heart of perhaps the most crucial internal battle within the Conservative Party.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Johnson was forced to resign from office because of a range of scandals last summer. However, Johnson\u2019s most loyal acolytes believe that Sunak\u2019s\u00a0decision to quit\u00a0as Johnson\u2019s finance minister was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back and made Johnson\u2019s position untenable. They believe he\u00a0was motivated by the opportunity\u00a0to take\u00a0a run at\u00a0the top job\u00a0himself, something Sunak denies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This battle between Sunak and Johnson has created a very strange dynamic within the party.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Johnson,\u00a0darling\u00a0of the Conservative right since the Brexit referendum, is in many ways politically to the left of Sunak. However, his\u00a0pragmatism over\u00a0Brexit\u00a0and cautious economics\u00a0has led\u00a0to his allies\u00a0painting\u00a0Sunak\u00a0as a Conservative sellout. <\/p>\n
They also believe that Sunak\u2019s betrayal of Johnson and\u00a0apparent\u00a0wish-washy centrism\u00a0is what will ultimately cost the Conservative Party the next general election\u00a0\u2013\u00a0ignoring the damage that Johnson did to the party and its standing in the polls through his scandal-ridden premiership.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Sunak has made attempts to counter these attacks by throwing red meat at Conservative MPs and voters. The\u00a0U-turn\u00a0on\u00a0climate policies\u00a0is just the most recent example. He\u2019s made\u00a0a\u00a0crackdown on immigration \u2013 particularly the route across the English Channel from France in so-called small boats\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a key plank of his agenda since taking office.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
He\u2019s been accused of\u00a0sowing division over over the complex issue\u00a0of\u00a0trans rights in attempts to win over his own MPs and has leant into the Johnsonite position of attacking \u201clefty lawyers\u201d over opposition to his plans, including those on immigration. <\/p>\n
His hard-line shift doesn\u2019t necessarily resonate with the public, most polls show. Which is why experts believe that Sunak is doubling down on his Conservative base, which might be his only real path to retaining power at the next election.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cSunak\u2019s strategy of taking on issues like net zero and small boats is very much a \u2018core vote\u2019 strategy,\u00a0aimed at securing the Conservative base,\u201d says Will Jennings, professor of politics at the University of Southampton.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not without risk \u2013 firstly because it\u2019s not clear how large that core vote is without Boris Johnson, Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn (the controversial, hard-left former Labour leader) and also because voters have other concerns right now \u2013 most notably the economy,\u201d he adds.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If you talk to senior Conservatives right now, there is a quiet acceptance that a loss is the most likely result of the next election. Most agree that not only does this look like a government in its death throes, but also that everyone is already thinking about who will replace Sunak after his defeat. Factions on the right and left of the party are already forming and people on both sides are already talking about how to win the battle for the soul of their party.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
While the next election may not be a foregone conclusion, the next few months will be critical if Sunak is to start turning the polls around and make the comeback of all comebacks. All of that starts this week in Manchester: a good conference could lift the mood and rally the troops; a bad conference could be the kiss of death to any hope his party had left.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n
Rishi Sunak will gather with members of his governing Conservative Party on Sunday for what is likely to be their final party conference before the UK\u2019s next general election, which Sunak is currently projected to lose.\u00a0 The Conservatives come together for their\u00a0annual meeting with little good news to celebrate. The party is trailing the opposition <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}