British politics is defined by jarringly sudden transformations. The big one was evident on 5 July, when Keir Starmer gave his first speech as prime minister outside No 10 Downing Street before the final seats had even been declared. The following week saw hoards of new MPs wandering bewilderedly around the labyrinthine Palace of Westminster, while their defeated predecessors rushed to clear out their desks before their parliamentary passes expired. If you wanted a visual metaphor for the seismic change in the political weather we’ve just experienced, you could not do better than the gaggle of previously prominent “Tory rebels” loitering in the courtyard holding carboard boxes of office supplies.
Rishi Sunak may have kept his seat, but the reversal of his own fortunes has been no less notable. I got lost the other day and ended up at the bottom of a staircase I’d never used before: on an almost sub-terranean corridor with views of a building site and a note on the wall explaining that the artwork usually found there had been temporarily removed (door marked “leader of the opposition”). This presumably is the new home of our former prime minister. After Downing Street, it may take some getting used to.
Still, Sunak has so far surprised Westminster watchers by how smoothly he appears to have adapted to his new role. His bleary-eyed resignation speech displayed a degree of graciousness and respect that was a marked contrast from his tetchy school prefect persona on the campaign trail. His response to Starmer’s King’s Speech less than two weeks later was even more striking: not just elevated and relaxed but with actual wit and a dash of the political awareness he seemed to so lack a month ago. “Life comes at you fast,” he told new MPs on the Labour benches. One day, he warned, “when the prime minister’s position becomes untenable, you might end up being called to the highest office, and before you know it, you have a bright future behind you. And you were left wondering whether you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44.”
Where was this statesmanlike Sunak six weeks ago? Is this really the same man who decided to leave a D-Day commemoration event early so he could pre-record an interview, or who thought voters would sympathise with him “going without” Sky TV as a child? And if all along Sunak had it in him to come across as magnanimous, self-aware and thoughtful, why did we see so little of that while he was actually prime minister? Why was his time in office so damagingly defined by the kind of divisive and toxic party mismanagement that managed to alienate just about everyone, in his own party and beyond?
There are a few possible explanations for this sudden transformation. The first is the obvious one: being prime minister is a lot harder than not being prime minister. Sunak is hardly the first former PM to be rehabilitated once he’s handed back the keys to No10 – just look at the metamorphoses of Theresa May, Gordon Brown and John Major from prime ministerial failures to cherished political grandees.
Partly this is because the British instinctively look favourably upon good losers. Contrition matters: May’s tears on leaving office and work on the back benches in the years following make her far easier to sympathise with than, for example, Tony Blair, who left on his own terms and has spent his post-politics life flitting around the world stage making millions, or Boris Johnson, whose exit was far more bitter and whose behaviour since can hardly be considered sporting (the less said about Liz Truss’s adventures since leaving office, the better).
And partly it’s because the pressure of trying to run the country while keeping a fractious party together (and parties are always fractious) inevitably exposes a politician’s greatest weaknesses – weaknesses which could be glossed over when they were simply a “potential” prime minister. A quote from the Roman historian Tacitus about one of the ill-fated protagonists in the Year of The Four Emperors springs to mind: “He seemed more than your average citizen when he was just an average citizen, someone whom everyone would have agreed would have made a great emperor had he never actually been emperor.” You can absolutely imagine similar being said of Sunak.
But I’m not sure that’s the whole story. Because the same could equally be said of party leaders who don’t go on to become prime minister – that they would have been talked about as great leaders of the opposition had they never actually got the job and had to lead the party in the wilderness. Just think about the way Ken Clarke is talked about, as opposed to, say, Iain Duncan Smith. This may be a comfort to whichever of the contenders to replace Sunak don’t end up with the job – that their reputation will grow while that of their victorious rival diminishes…
The caretaker role Sunak currently has is a unique one in politics, defined by its transience. He doesn’t need to unite the party around him, make difficult decisions about trade-offs and strategy, or even set the tone of the Tories’ time in opposition. That minefield will be for his successor to walk. Instead, he just has to provide the polish, offering the veneer of competent management while the vicious fight to replace him plays out somewhere else. Sunak is good at polish. He’s good at looking like he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t have to make the tough calls that will inevitably upset someone. What he’s not good at, as we learned while he was PM, is actual leadership.
In the chamber on Monday, Starmer accidentally referred to his old adversary as the “the prime minister”, correcting himself instantly and chuckling “old habits die hard”. On the opposite bench Sunak was chuckling too, with the easy grace of a man who has found his true calling. Now he has a job that puts him centre-stage but without any real power at all – like a school prefect, you might say. And he’s perfect at it.
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