After one year in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak has failed to place the Conservative Party on an election-winning footing. Last week, he was pummelled by two enormous by-election defeats in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire. Polling shows the number of people who think he is competent on key policy issues has shrunk. He is weighed down by his party’s unpopularity and entrenched policy issues, from inflation to the Channel crossings. In response, he has sought to build a policy offering that looks beyond the next election, only to focus on issues that people do not prioritise. The Conservative Party conference – one of three platforms to reset his messaging, alongside the King’s Speech and the Autumn Statement – was a missed opportunity to offer a coherent vision of where a country under the Conservatives would be in five years’ time.
These troubles show little sign of abating even as attention remains on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The government’s response to the fighting there has yet again contrasted Sunak’s ability to act credibly on the world stage with his failure to do so at home. The pivot to calling for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid deliveries shows the government’s alignment with the US and the EU, which have mooted similar proposals. This is the latest example of Sunak normalising the UK’s diplomatic relations following his predecessors’ less conventional approaches.
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