Sunak’s speech: a last, desperate gasp

Rishi Sunak was hoping for a calmer Conservative Party conference than last year’s “morgue with booze” that sowed the seeds of Liz Truss’s demise. Instead, it felt like a steam train running out of puff.

So what? Widely expected to be the last conference before a general election, this should have been Sunak’s moment to reset and re-engage with the party faithful. Instead, ministers offered conspiracy theories, rivals set out their stalls and troublemakers stole the show. Taken together, it reinforced the sense of a government on its way out. 

Winds of change. Sunak pitched himself as a change candidate, but after 13 years of Conservative government, that’s a hard sell. What seems more likely is that the winds of change invoked by Home Secretary Suella Braverman in her speech warning of a “hurricane” of immigration will usher in a new Conservative leader next year. 

In the prime minister’s keynote speech on Wednesday, he announced 

• a phased ban on smoking;
• a new baccalaureate-style qualification in place of A and T Level; and
• a renewed commitment to halving inflation before cutting taxes.  

But it was his £36 billion U-turn that dominated. 

HS2, derailed: Having allowed it to overshadow the three days in Manchester, Sunak yesterday confirmed he was breaking with three of his Tory predecessors by scrapping HS2 beyond Birmingham. He promised to reinvest all the savings in a new Network North scheme stringing roads and rail lines across the Pennines. But these replacement projects are neither exclusively northern nor entirely new. And while the PM pledged that the money would be fully redeployed, he didn’t say when.

That means it won’t happen before the next election, if at all; funds not spent on one project aren’t automatically available for others, especially in democracies where priorities change on shorter timescales than it takes to build a railway. But there will be a few billion of new headroom for next year’s budget, which the chancellor could transform into pre-election tax cuts.  

Vote winners? The jury’s out. As with Sunak’s recent flip-flop on net zero, there are Tory MPs and members who will lap up the HS2 shift. But while Sunak is more popular than his party, both lag Labour in the polls.

Troublemakers. Truss has already said she would oppose the smoking ban. It’s not clear where else her growing rebel alliance – 60 and counting according to the Guardian – will strike. But it could cause trouble on HS2, which may have to be put to a vote.

Sunak delivered a perfectly adequate speech (best line: “I’m proud to be the first British Asian prime minister, but I’m even prouder that it’s just not a big deal.”). But his connection to the party feels tenuous. His lack of authority and a general sense that the end is nigh created a vacuum in which would-be leaders jockeyed for future support and crackpot ideas were freely espoused. 

Baseless claims in speeches approved by Number Ten included: 

• “sinister” moves by Labour councils to count and control shopping trips through low-traffic neighbourhoods (transport Secretary Mark Harper);
• Labour plans for a “meat tax” (energy secretary Claire Coutinho); 
• a “huge movement… to create essentially a world government” (backbench MP Danny Kruger); and
• the idea that London’s Jewish community is “frightened” by Mayor Sadiq Khan (Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall).

Many of those speaking would have been at home in a David Cameron government. That they’re now flirting with online conspiracy theories shows how far the party has moved towards its own fringe – more on the model of US Republicans than the rest of Europe’s centre-right.

Once the dust has settled, this conference is likely to be remembered not for Sunak’s speech but for Braverman’s, whose polished delivery made clear how seriously she is taking herself as a leadership contender. But she was very far from alone. Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel and Liz Truss herself were courting members and drawing crowds. 

Sunak’s chosen theme was “long term decisions for a brighter future”. He certainly made some decisions. Whether they end up brightening his or anyone’s future is another matter.

Trivia: What is thought to be the world’s oldest and longest running international sporting fixture? Read tomorrow’s Sensemaker to find out…