Text/Hu Yukun
Editor/Qi Fei
The name Rishi Sunak is destined to become a hot word in British politics in 2022.
Sunak
Three and a half months ago, a letter of his resignation hastened the end of Boris Johnson's premiership; A month and a half ago, he led the way in the Conservative leadership race and ended up on the final vote for party members, but his argument during the campaign debate that Liz Truss's economic policy options were an "(unrealistic) fairy tale" was quickly confirmed.
Now, Truss's 45-day Prime Minister Experience Card is about to expire, and Sunak has a "surprise": with the biggest contender, Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons, announcing his withdrawal before the deadline for registration, he became the first Asian (and Indian) prime minister in British history to enter 10 Downing Street. At 42, he is also Britain's youngest prime minister in more than 200 years.
After Sunak was elected, Indian-American voters couldn't hide their excitement on Twitter.
Shortly after the news of the victory was announced, Sunak told members of parliament: "Unite or die." He admits that the Conservative Party faces an "existential crisis" and that people should focus on policy, not personality.
It is the third prime minister in the UK in the past seven weeks and the fifth since the 2016 Brexit referendum. Although the suspense was revealed in advance, the BBC reporter sharply raised the doubts in the British mind: "Can you guarantee that your 'drama' is over?" For the Conservatives and their new post-80s leaders, this conundrum remains their biggest challenge.
Sunak never left
"What an incredible moment. The loser of September became the winner of October. BBC political correspondent Chris Mason commented. In fact, in the past month and a half, Sunak has never left.
On September 5, when Sunak lost to Truss in the vote of party members, he immediately called for the unity of the party and support for Truss's leadership. During this period, despite the uproar caused by Truss's administration, Sunak, who returned to the position of backbencher (an ordinary member sitting in the back seat of the British House of Commons), has kept a low profile, and he has not made any comments on social platforms other than two tweets related to Queen Elizabeth II.
But low-key and silent do not mean lying flat or leaving the center of the political stage. After Sunak's defeat, his former special adviser Pete Cadwell wrote in the British newspaper "i" that Sunak is essentially an optimist with energy and ideas, and does not consider his political career to be over, let alone be regarded as an "unpleasant loser".
Sunak is well aware that public sympathy for the losers is limited and diminishes over time, so he will not be like the defeated Conservative and Labour leaders, who will either be unable to let go, spit out their opponents, or say goodbye to politics and never recover.
The day after his return to the backbench, Cadwell boldly asserted that Sunak would do his best to serve the Yorkshire constituency of Richmond, which he represents, and to be a quieter, more thoughtful politician in the Truss era, waiting for the 2024 general election.
As it turned out, Cadwell's judgment was too conservative: it took Truss only six weeks to end his trip to Downing Street, allowing Sunak to make an immediate comeback.
"Get ready for Rishi" was Sunak's campaign slogan this summer, not only about what he did (after all, almost nothing was known about it in the past month and a half), but also about how those around him – especially the top Conservative Party and party MPs – viewed Sunak.
Over the past three months, Conservative MPs have given their answers: in the party leadership election that began in July, Sunak led by a clear margin in the first five rounds of MPs, and only three Conservative MPs switched sides after five rounds; When Truss resigned, Sunak gained the support of more than half of the party members (at least 195 people).
Sunak poses with supporters at a Conservative Party leader campaign rally in Birmingham, England, in August.
Even during Truss's brief reign, Sunak's policy ideas remained a "ghost" that she could not avoid. The-for-tat between economic and fiscal policy was the main axis of Truss's election campaign, when Truss criticized Sunak as an "old-fashioned fiscal orthodox", but then the story is extremely ironic: after Truss's aggressive tax cut package cost £45 billion and caused an earthquake in financial markets, he had to self-deny, and revert to the so-called "old-fashioned policy" of raising the corporate tax rate from 19% to 25% and maintaining the income tax rate at 20%.
Since many people are still preparing to welcome Sunak, and the latter's policies have never left, why not let him personally lead the implementation of his own policies?
Conservative elites 'can't wait'
Historically, Edward Heath was the last Conservative leader to be voted for and then removed by British voters (1974). Since then, in addition to Cameron's resignation due to the Brexit referendum and Major losing power in the 1997 election, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, Johnson, and Truss were all forced to step down by lawmakers in the party struggle; Major , Theresa May, Johnson , Truss and even Sunak became prime minister through party voting rather than national elections.
In other words, over the past few decades, the top Conservative elite has played no less role than voters in the selection of party leaders and prime ministers. In recent years, they have tended to be more "impatient" than voters when it comes to who is leading the Conservative Party and the country.
In December 2018, Conservative MPs launched a vote of confidence in then-Prime Minister Theresa May, despite a 200-vote majority in the withdrawal proposal, resigning six months later.
In June this year, as Johnson's "partygate" evidence continued to be revealed, the Conservative Party's support continued to fall, and 359 party lawmakers participated in a confidence vote against him, when Johnson's support rating was even less than 60%. Originally gritting his teeth and insisting on not retreating, he could not withstand the wave of resignations of more than 50 cabinet members a month later, the continuous "anti-water" of party members, and had to "give up the best job in the world."
On October 19, Truss still called himself a "fighter" in parliament and insisted on not retreating, but with the resignation of Home Secretary Braverman and the succession of party members to "force the palace", she had to "disarm" on the 20th, becoming the most "short-lived" prime minister in British history.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt addresses the House of Commons in London on October 17.
Even Sunak's unexpected rise to power is a "product" created by these Conservative elites. Although he was the one with the largest supporters of lawmakers during the last party leadership election, most ordinary party members still favored Truss in the face of the lure and hardline character of Truss's tax cut words, implicit reservations about minorities, and some controversy over Sunak himself and his family. The Conservative MPs at the time followed the traditional electoral process, and after six rounds of voting over nearly two months, respecting the majority opinion, Truss was finally appointed.
But when Truss "flashed out", the same group of MPs did not want to wait any longer and quickly formulated a plan to elect a new prime minister within a week: those who intend to run must win the nomination of at least 100 Conservative MPs by 2 p.m. local time on October 24, and if more than one person meets the threshold, all party members will choose a new party leader through online voting.
Sunak was next to the campaign headquarters in London on October 24.
Compared to the last campaign, Sunak has noticeably become more cautious. More than three months ago, Sunak announced his candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party immediately after Johnson's resignation. In this campaign, when Sunak was discussed as a strong contender for the next prime minister, he did not move. It wasn't until multiple media statistics showed that more than 100 Conservative MPs publicly announced their support for Sunak that he officially announced his candidacy on October 23.
In the final stages of nomination, two potential prime minister's candidates, Sunak and Johnson, had a private meeting. According to the BBC, two different sources confirmed the meeting, but did not disclose the content of the meeting. Only shortly after the meeting, Sunak ran in a high-profile manner, and Johnson announced that he would not run.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrives at Gatwick Airport near London on October 22.
Whether Johnson, Chancellor Chancellor Hunt, Defense Secretary Wallace and others decided not to run because they felt the time was wrong or did not want to muddy the waters, the number of party members who nominated Sunak was more than half a phenomenon that did not occur in the last election.
The British "Guardian" revealed the inside story of the countdown on October 24: According to Mordaunt's campaign team, just when Mordaunt received nearly 100 people promising support, Johnson not only suddenly announced his withdrawal from the competition after flying back to London, but also issued "intimidation" to party lawmakers, making these people panic choose to support Sunak, thus ensuring that Johnson had no chance to make a comeback; This caused the number of MPs supporting Mordaunt to plummet in the final hours, leaving her with a graceful exit with less than 10 votes off the threshold.
Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, who announced his withdrawal at the last minute.
In the last election, Mordaunt was not overtaken by Truss until the fifth round of the vote and lost the opportunity to fight, which was the second time in a row that she fell before the threshold of party members' voting. The Guardian noted that Mordaunt's team felt she had never been given a fair playing field. The reason for this series of operations is that Conservative MPs can't afford to wait so much that they are reluctant to wait four more days for the new prime minister to be decided by party members.
After all, Britain's domestic problems are imminent, and the opposition Labour Party, which is nearly 40% ahead of the Conservative Party, calls for an early general election every day. Without the removal of Sunak, the recognized savior of the party elite, they can't imagine what will happen tomorrow. In this way, Mordaunt became a victim of "forbearance for the party".
Polls show that two-thirds of Britons think Labour will win the next general election.
Destabilizing factors inside and outside the Party
On October 25, local time, Sunak became the first Prime Minister appointed by Charles III and the youngest British Prime Minister in more than 250 years. From the perspective of the Conservative elite, Sunak is indeed a relatively ideal choice for the current talent-starved Conservative Party.
He has long adhered to the traditional Conservative ideal, is a staunch supporter of Euroscepticism and Brexit, and has said that "my principles come first", and his position and values can reassure his colleagues. At the same time, he belongs to the moderate wing of the Conservative Party, and his domestic governance cannot go to extremes like Truss, and his few speeches on China were once relatively pragmatic.
Sunak has received an elite education, has outstanding financial expertise and has a history of working in investment institutions. As early as during the Brexit referendum, he prepared for a rainy day, writing a report for the Centre for Policy Studies, a Thatcherist think tank, with recommendations on how to maximize losses in the post-Brexit era. After becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of 39, he invested hundreds of billions of pounds to support people and businesses borrowing under the pandemic, and at one point became the most satisfied Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1978.
In addition to the financial field, he also participated in the legislation of grassroots affairs governance at the beginning of his political career, studied the work of ethnic minorities, and paid attention to non-financial and economic affairs.
Sunak, a Hindu, was sworn in by Indian media as he began his new term in parliament in 2019 with the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu classic. Now that his victory coincided with Diwali, the mood of Hindu believers will only be happier. But as Britain's first Indian-born prime minister, Sunak may not be happy for long.
Although the best choice at the moment, Sunak's rise to power does not mean the end of the "drama" of British politics, and no one can say for sure whether his premiership will be calculated by day, month or year. For the Conservatives and Britain, an uncertain future continues.
If Sunak's performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer was mixed, the voices surrounding his personal controversy have never ceased. Sunak has always positioned his key trait as "career middle class" rather than "Asian", but in the eyes of the British, studying at an aristocratic public school with annual tuition fees of more than 40,000 pounds, studying at Lincoln College, Oxford, and studying for an MBA at Stanford University, the most expensive university in the United States, then from the City of Finance to Westminster Palace and now into Downing Street, is a typical path for the upper class to rise to power through the Conservative Party.
A previously published survey asked people to describe Sunak in one word. One in particular stands out: wealth.
Sunak's wife, Akshata Murti, is the daughter of an Indian billionaire and her father is billionaire Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys. According to the latest 2022 rich list released by the British "Times", the wealth of Sunak and his wife is estimated at $845.5 million, and the wealth of Queen Elizabeth II before her death was only $418.5 million.
Sunak with his wife, Akshata Murti. The couple's wealth is estimated at $845.5 million.
Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute of Government Research, a London-based research organization, said Sunak's wealth could be a weakness in his politics. There are some signs that he is out of touch with the British mainstream.
During this summer's Conservative Party leadership election, his team aired a video clip of a 2007 BBC documentary in which Sunak said he had no "working-class friends". And in a discussion about rising food prices, he described "all the different breads in my house."
When ordinary people are suffering from high energy and daily necessities bills, Sunak, the son-in-law of a wealthy Indian family, has a US green card, has a house in California, his wife has avoided millions of pounds in taxes because she applied for "non-resident" status, and her family property declaration has also been controversial... Although these questions are self-righteous, in the unfavorable times, his huge contrast with ordinary people will affect his career as prime minister. His former boss, Johnson, has proven it.
Sunak has never publicly commented on the recent turmoil inside and outside the Conservative Party. He said only in this round that his goal was to solve the "severe economic crisis" facing Britain and "unite the Conservative Party". Almost all the people on the table of the Conservative Party today have said similar things, but the reality is very skinny, and there are factors of instability and disunity inside and outside the party.
Before Sunak was elected, Labour had publicly questioned his legitimacy and legitimacy as prime minister, pointing out that he, like many Conservative prime ministers in the past, was not the result of a "popular mandate". In the party, many Johnson fans are still unwilling to fully support Sunak for "betraying" Johnson this summer, causing the latter to resign.
On December 1, 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Finance Minister Sunak walked out of the Prime Minister's Office.
Even if Sunak can govern with peace of mind, the current difficulties are unprecedented. Due to the energy crisis and soaring food prices, UK inflation has returned to a 40-year high of 10.1%, the worst of the G7 countries. In early October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued another warning that the UK was facing a serious economic stagnation and inflation crisis, and that the UK economy was expected to stop growing next year.
On the one hand, inflation is eroding the purchasing power of ordinary Britons; On the other hand, Sunak cannot repeat the mistakes of Truss's aggressive tax cuts and national debt, but how to ensure that people can survive the winter smoothly and avoid large-scale poverty and economic uncertainty after the tax increase is a greater challenge.
In the past few months, employees of the UK's air and rail systems have gone on strike more than once for income reasons. Now that the NHS is struggling to make ends meet, the Royal College of Nursing is calling on its unionists to take action for the first time in 106 years, as the NHS is witnessing a reduction in the number of medical staff and longer queues for medical services. The social crisis of the spread of strikes in various industries is also testing Sunak's professionalism, rationality and patience.
Unfortunately, in addition to the economic crisis, the issue of the reunification of the United Kingdom was also in front of Sunak. Until 28 October, the deadline for the formation of a local coalition government in Northern Ireland, it had been impossible to form a coalition government due to the disagreement between the two major parties in the Northern Ireland Local Assembly, Sinn Féin (Republican) (independent) and the "royalist" (unionist) Democratic Unionist Party, over whether to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Predictably, Northern Ireland remains administratively vacant after this week, with a new general election seemingly the only option. In Northern Ireland, where the contradictions between Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and royalists are acute, regional stability and even the unity of the United Kingdom have been the persistent and difficult problems of successive British prime ministers.
At present, the "Bill to Amend the Northern Ireland Protocol" is under review in Parliament, and Sunak faces two more dilemmas: if it is moderated, opponents in the party will accuse him of being too weak and not conducive to maintaining Britain's internal unity and stability; If it is passed, it will offend the EU externally, or suffer retaliatory trade sanctions, and internally it will trigger a strong Republican backlash and endanger the stability of Northern Ireland.
There has been a major shift in attitude toward China
As for diplomatic issues, which he is not good at, they are an unavoidable burden for Sunak.
The Ukraine crisis is about the energy and inflation crisis within the UK, as well as the foreign policy of the Western world as a whole, as well as the foreign aid of the British government. The UK is scheduled to provide Ukraine with £2.3 billion worth of aid this year, second only to the US. At present, aid to Ukraine is a bipartisan consensus in the UK, but the spillover effects of the Ukraine crisis, especially energy, inflation and refugees, as well as the persistence of US pressure, make it difficult for Sunak to find the best of both worlds to alleviate the crisis.
On the sensitive issue of China, Sunak said little before deciding to run for party leadership this year, but it was his talk last year of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's perspective on the importance of improving UK-China trade relations and building a "mature and balanced" bilateral relationship. At that time, he was still making statements in the form of "valuing China's important economic influence while upholding our values, principles and positions," but he was already much more rational and moderate among the Conservatives.
Now that he is about to become prime minister, Sunak's attitude has changed significantly. When some British media spread rumors that China supported Sunak's election, he publicly declared China "the biggest long-term threat to Britain" during his campaign at the end of July.
He proposed closing 30 Confucius Institutes in the UK to reduce the influence of China's soft power; Commit to requiring UK universities to publish details of their foreign funding contributions and review their research partners; It plans to use MI5 to "fight Chinese spies" and seek to establish a "NATO-style international cooperation model" to play games against China in the field of cybersecurity. He also accused China of "stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities" and criticized the Belt and Road initiative, saying tolerance for China was enough. "I'm going to change all that on my first day as prime minister." Sunak responded to Truss's accusations that he was "soft" on China and Russia.
Conservative Party members, represented by Ian Duncan Smith, are not convinced, saying that Sunak's finance ministry has been pushing for an economic partnership agreement with China for the past two years, and the UK and the international community are surprised by Sunak's 180-degree turn. After becoming prime minister, it is worth paying attention to whether Sunak chooses to be "mature, balanced" or "unbearable".
In addition, the issue of the resettlement of illegal immigrants to Rwanda in the United Kingdom continues to be stranded, and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon once again called for early elections and a second independence referendum next year in an interview with the BBC...
The young Sunak entered the Prime Minister's Office earlier than expected, but was he really prepared for the long list of "to-do" items mentioned above?
(The author is a member of the China Translators Association and a columnist in international politics)