The Conservatives appointed Rishi Sunak leader of the Tory party a little over a year ago, hoping he would rescue them from the mess his predecessors had made.
The economy was in terrible shape, public institutions and services were in chaos, and the NHS waiting lists were the highest they’d been at any point in the past 15 years. Opinion poll after opinion poll put these issues at the forefront of the British public’s concerns.
Immigration was also prominent in the polls, but in a more nuanced way than in earlier years. British attitudes towards migration have actually been improving: this year, for the first time, only a minority of people want immigration to be reduced. What continues to worry them is the issue of the small boats.
These bother people, even though they are a small portion of overall arrivals. The reasons are varied and not all negative. Many people don’t like seeing refugees’ lives at risk, while others simply desire a sense of order. Not everybody worried about the boats wants to prevent vulnerable people from seeking protection in the UK.
So Sunak had options for where to get started. He chose to continue tying the party’s identity to reducing migration by the harshest means possible.
In the process, he’s tied a noose which is strangling his own chances of re-election.
A house of their own making
Sunak inherited both high legal migration numbers, especially arrivals for work and study, and the small boats crisis. And while one could argue that, as chancellor, he had had at least a hand in the former, he could have approached the latter with a relatively clean slate.
Instead, he redoubled his commitment to his predecessors’ contradictory, mismanaged gimmickry. Starmer should be watching closely. If elected, he too will inherit an ungodly mess on migration. Whether he chains himself to hostility in the same way that Sunak has may well make or break his chances.
Nobody trusts the government on immigration, not because everybody wants the same thing but because it consistently feels like amateur hour
Sunak has tried out a number of different images since he became prime minister in October 2022. He’s been the safe pair of hands steadying the ship, the ‘change candidate’ ready to confront old legacies, and even the conciliator and continuity candidate.
None of these versions of “the real Rishi” landed particularly favourably, perhaps because they have all been dominated by the same message: this PM, more than anything else, will prove himself to voters through his hostility to migrants.
The reason for this, we can only assume, is that he has judged whipping up anger around migration to be a cheaper, easier and quicker route to votes than improving the economy or unclogging the NHS. And he needed speed. As the third Tory prime minister of this term, Sunak never had a lot of time on his side.
But all those changes in self-presentation were also opportunities to change tack. He could see the Rwanda plan wasn’t going well, and if he hadn’t been blinded by an obsession with migration he could have switched to other stories that made his (and the Tories’) many failures at least less obvious.
Inflation has dropped and, despite the government having little to do with it, Sunak had a chance of pitching the Tories as the party of recovery. The Autumn Statement was another chance to sell economic success, and Hunt gave it a go by presenting tax cuts paid for by future spending cuts to public services as another win.
But each time, within days, sometimes even hours, another story of chaos at the Home Office drowned out every other conversation.
It’s all in the sell
Sunak appears to have spent his first year as prime minister assuming he would get away with running historically high rates of net immigration while loudly shouting about bringing numbers down.
Doing so was an unnecessary act of self-harm. He would have likely been fine if he had given consistency a shot and levelled with the public about the needs of the economy and the health and care sector. Both are more important to voters than the number of immigrants.
Similarly, high immigration numbers would have been much less damaging if he had presented them as part of his solution to the problem – by bringing in taxation, billions in foreign student contributions, needed labour – rather suggesting they’re an aberration. Or, worse, claiming that dropping them is his plan for fixing the economy.
Nobody trusts the government on immigration, not because everybody wants the same thing but because it consistently feels like amateur hour. It claims to want low numbers, achieves the opposite, and seems surprised.
Cruelty as a vocation
More surprising still is Sunak’s choice to pin his entire career to the success or failure of the Rwanda deal. Let’s not forget: Priti Patel announced this half-baked distraction deal when she was home secretary in Boris Johnson’s government. Experts on both sides of the debate warned it was likely doomed from the start, and that it would have little impact on irregular migration if it ever got off the ground.
Sunak has given the Rwandan government millions, undermined the British courts, disdained international law, and is now trying to pass legislation stating that fiction is fact
Sunak could have completely disavowed it. He could have turned to more evidence-based policies after the Court of Appeal found it unlawful, or after the Supreme Court delivered its damning judgment, or when he sacked his home secretary, or when his immigration minister resigned. There were chances to switch gears. Hell, he could say enough is enough tomorrow and still have a chance of redeeming himself in the eyes of a good chunk of the electorate.
But nothing signals hostility like the front pages showing a few hundred terrified foreigners being shipped to a faraway African country for life. Sunak apparently can’t resist the allure of that image, which he clearly believes will be enough to save him from all the rest of his failures and humiliations.
And so he ploughs on. He’s given the Rwandan government millions, undermined the British courts, disdained international law, and is now trying to pass legislation stating that fiction is fact. Caught in an undignified open battle with the rabid far right of his party, he’s chosen to plunge down the rabbit hole of absurdity with eyes wide open.
Sunak cannot seem to stop digging. His best case scenario by this point would be to pass through the centre of the Earth and emerge in Australia, where the “stop the boats” slogan actually had some political success. But given his track record, he’d probably just pop out in the middle of the English Channel and have to swim ashore.
We’ll just have to wait and see. His zombie government may limp through to pass his new bill. And, for unknown millions of pounds more, he may even manage to get a few people onto one of those flights. But in pursuing this he has left the vast majority of the British public far behind, trying to get a GP appointment.
When he is defeated, as he surely will be, it will end the dramatic fall from grace of a politician who was seen as a force to be reckoned with just 18 months ago. It’s a lesson for Labour: threadbare lies easily become tripwires.
We need an honest conversation about migration at last.
