text/Hu Yukun
edit/Qi Fei
Rishi Sunak (Rishi Sunak) is destined to become a hot word in the British political arena in 2022.
Sunak
Three and a half months ago, his resignation letter accelerated the end of his career as prime minister; a month and a half ago, he led the way in the Conservative Party leader election, but he fell to the final party member vote, but his discussion of Liz Trass' economic policy plan during the campaign debate was a "(unrealistic) fairy tale" and was quickly confirmed.
Now, Tras's 45-day Prime Minister Experience Card expires quickly, Sunak ushers in "unexpected joy": With the largest competitor, Parliament's lower house leader Penny Modant announced his withdrawal before the deadline for registration for the election, as the only candidate, he became the first Asian (and Indian) prime minister in British history to enter No. 10 Downing Street, . At the age of 42, he is also the youngest prime minister in Britain in more than 200 years.
After Sunak was elected, Indian voters could not hide their excitement on Twitter. Shortly after the announcement of the victory of
, Sunak told parliamentarians: "Either unite or die." He admitted that the Conservative Party is facing a "survival crisis" and everyone should pay attention to policies rather than personal character.
This is the third prime minister in the UK in the past seven weeks and the fifth prime minister since the 2016 Brexit referendum. Although the suspense was revealed in advance, the BBC (BBC) reporter sharply raised the doubts in the hearts of the British: "Can you guarantee that your 'drama' is over?" For the Conservative Party and its new leaders born in the 1980s, this problem is still their biggest challenge.
Sunak never left
"What an incredible moment. The loser in September became the winner in October." BBC political reporter Chris Mason commented. In fact, Sunak has never left in the past month and a half.
On September 5, when Sunak lost to Tras in the party member voting, he immediately issued a call for the whole party to unite and support Tras' leadership. During this period, despite the uproar caused by Tras's administration, Sunak, who returned to the backbench (the ordinary MP sitting in the back seat in the lower house of the British Parliament), always kept a low profile. Apart from two tweets related to Queen Elizabeth II , he had not made any comments on social platforms.
But low-key and silent do not mean lying flat or leaving the center of the political stage. After Sunak lost the election, his former special adviser Pete Cardwell wrote an article in the British Tide Newspaper "i" pointing out that Sunak is essentially an energy-minded and thoughtful optimist, and does not think that his political career has ended, nor does he want to be regarded as an "unpleasant defeated general."
Sunak is very clear that the public's sympathy for losers is limited and will gradually fade over time. Therefore, he will not be like the Conservative Party and the leaders of the Labor Party who have suffered setbacks, either cannot let go, complain about his opponents, or bid farewell to politics and never recover from now on.
When he returned to the backbench, Cardwell boldly asserted that Sunak would do his best to serve the Richmond constituency he represented in Yorkshire, and on the other hand, he would be a quieter, more thoughtful politician in the Tras era, waiting for the 2024 election.
Facts have proved that Cardwell's judgment is still too conservative: Unexpectedly, Trace ended his Downing Street trip in just six weeks, allowing Sunak to make a comeback immediately.
"Prepare to welcome Rich" is Sunak's campaign slogan this summer. This is not only related to what he did (after all, the outside world knows almost nothing about it in the past month and a half), but also how the people around him - especially the Conservative Party leaders and party members - view Sunak.
Over the past three months, Conservative MPs have given their answers: starting with the party’s top election in July, Sunak led by a clear advantage in the first five rounds of MP voting, and only three Conservative MPs changed their positions after five rounds; and when Tras resigned, Sunak received support from more than half of the party members (at least 195).
At the Conservative Party Leadership Campaign Rally held in Birmingham, England in August this year, Sunak took a photo with his supporters.
Even during the short term of Terras's rule, Sunak's policy philosophy still became a "ghost" that she could not avoid. The tit-for-tat of economic and fiscal policy was the main axis of the campaign between Trass and Sunak. At that time, Tras criticized Sunak as a "conservative fiscal orthodox", but the subsequent story was extremely ironic: after the radical tax cut plan wasted 45 billion pounds and triggered an earthquake in the financial market, it had to deny itself and return to the so-called "conservative policy" - increasing the corporate tax rate from 19% to 25%, and maintaining the income tax rate of 20%.
Since many people are still preparing to welcome Sunak and the latter's policies have never left, why not let him lead the implementation of his own policies?
Conservative elites "can't wait"
From a historical perspective, Edward Heath is the last Conservative leader to be voted by British voters and then removed (1974). Since then, in addition to Cameron resigning in disgrace due to the Brexit referendum and Major resigning in the 1997 general election, Mrs. Thatcher , Theresa May , Johnson , and Trass were all forced to step down by lawmakers in the intra-party struggle; the reason why Major , Theresa May , Johnson , Trass and even Sunak became prime ministers was also due to intra-party voting rather than the national election.
In other words, over the past few decades, the senior elites of the Conservative Party have played no less role in the election of party leaders and prime ministers than voters. In recent years, they have often been more "unwaited" than voters when it comes to candidates leading the Conservative Party and the country.
In December 2018, due to the delay in getting parliamentary support, Conservative MPs launched a vote of confidence in then-Prince Theresa May. Although she was able to pass the 200-vote majority at that time, she resigned six months later.
In June this year, as evidence of Johnson's "party door" was continuously disclosed, the Conservative Party's approval rating continued to fall, and 359 party members participated in the vote of confidence against him. At that time, Johnson's approval rating was even less than 60%. He had originally gritted his teeth and insisted on resigning, and could not withstand the resignation wave of more than 50 people in the cabinet and the continuous "reversal" of party members in the party, and had to "give up the best job in the world."
On October 19, Tras also claimed to be a "fighter" in parliament and insisted on resigning, but with the resignation of Home Secretary Braverman and the resignation of party members one after another, she had to "disarm" on the 20th and became the "short-lived" prime minister in British history.
On October 17, British Chancellor Jeremy Hunter delivered a speech in the House of Commons in London.
Even Sunak's unexpected come to power is also a "product" created by these Conservative elites. Although he has always been the one with the most supporters of lawmakers during the last party's top election, most ordinary party members still tend toward Tras in the face of the temptation and tough personality of the tax cuts, their implicit reservations towards minorities, and some controversies between Sunak himself and his family. The Conservative MPs at the time followed the traditional election process, and after nearly two months of six rounds of voting, respecting the opinions of the majority of party members, they finally appointed Tras.
But when Tras "flashed", the same group of MPs were unwilling to wait any longer and quickly formulated a plan to elect a new prime minister within a week: interested candidates must win the nomination of at least 100 Conservative MPs before 2 pm local time on October 24th. If more than one person reaches the threshold, all party members will elect the new party leader through online voting.
On October 24, Sunak was next to his campaign headquarters in London.
Compared with the last election, Sunak has obviously become cautious. More than three months ago, Sunak immediately announced his participation in the Conservative Party head competition the day after Johnson resigned.During this election, when the outside world discussed Sunak as a strong contender for the next prime minister for many days, he was slow to move. It was not until statistics from multiple media outlets 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 stage of the nomination, two potential prime minister candidates, Sunak, and Johnson, had a private meeting. According to the BBC, two different sources confirmed the meeting but did not disclose the contents of the meeting. But shortly after the meeting, Sunak ran for a high-profile election and Johnson announced that he would not participate in the election.
On October 22, former British Prime Minister Johnson arrived at Gatwick Airport near London.
Whether Johnson, Chancellor of the Exchequer Hunter , Secretary of Defense Wallace and others decided not to run for election, because they felt that the time was not right or they didn't want to mess up, more than half of the party members nominated Sunak was a phenomenon that had never happened in the last election.
The British " Guardian " revealed the inside story of the countdown on October 24: According to Modant's campaign team, just when Modant received the promise of support from nearly 100 people, Johnson not only suddenly announced his withdrawal from the competition after flying back to London, but also issued "intimidation" to the party members, making these people panic choose to support Sunak, thus ensuring that Johnson has no chance to make a comeback; this led to a sharp drop in the number of MPs supporting Modant in the last few hours, allowing her to finally choose to withdraw with a gap of less than 10 votes away.
The leader of the British Parliament's Lower House of Commons, Modant, announced his withdrawal from the election at the last moment.
In the last election, Modant was not overtaken by Tras by the fifth round of MP votes and lost the chance of a decisive battle. This was the second time in a row that she fell before the threshold of a party member voting. The Guardian pointed out that Modant's team believes she has never been given a fair chance to compete. The reason for this series of operations is that Conservative MPs can't afford to wait, so they are reluctant to wait for four more days to hand over the ownership of the new prime minister to the party members.
After all, the UK's internal affairs are imminent at the moment. The opposition Labour Party, who is leading the Conservative Party, calls for early elections every day. If Sunak, the recognized savior of the elite in the party, would not have imagined what would happen tomorrow. In this way, Modant became a victim of "being indomitable for the party".
polls show that two-thirds of British people believe that Labor will win the next general election.
Instability factors inside and outside the party
On October 25th local time, Sunak became the first prime minister appointed by Charles III , and is also the youngest British prime minister in more than 250 years. From the perspective of the Conservative elites, Sunak is indeed a relatively ideal choice for the Conservative Party, which is currently lacking in talent.
He has long adhered to the traditional Conservative philosophy and is a staunch supporter of EU doubt and Brexit. He said, "My principles are first." His position and value philosophy can reassure his colleagues. At the same time, he is a moderate in the Conservative Party. He cannot go as extreme as Trass's internal governance. He once made a few speeches on China.
Sunak has received elite education, has outstanding financial expertise and investment institutions' work experience. As early as the Brexit referendum, he prepared for the "Policy Research Center", a think tank that upholds Thatcherism , and proposed suggestions on how to stop losses to the greatest extent in the post-Brexit era. After becoming the Minister of Finance at the age of 39, he invested hundreds of billions of pounds to support people and enterprises lending under the epidemic, and once became the highest public satisfaction minister since 1978.
In addition to the financial field, he also participated in the legislation on grassroots affairs governance at the beginning of his political career, studied minority work, and maintained attention to non-financial affairs.
Sunak is a Hindus . When he started his new term in parliament in 2019, Indian media reported that he was sworn in with the Hindu classic " Bhagavad Gita ". Now that his victory is just in time for Diwali in India, the Hindu believers will only be more happy. But as the first Indian Prime Minister in the UK, Sunak may not be happy for too long.Although
is the best choice at the moment, Sunak's coming to power does not mean the end of the "drama" in the British political arena. No one can determine whether his prime minister's career will be calculated by day, month or year. For the Conservatives and Britain, an uncertain future continues.
If Sunak's performance as the Chancellor of the Finance Department is mixed, the voices surrounding him have never been interrupted. Sunak always positioned his key traits as "professional middle class" rather than "Asian", but in the eyes of the British, he studied at the aristocratic public school with an annual tuition fee of more than £40,000, and studied at the Lincoln College, Oxford University, and also studied at the MBA in the most expensive Stanford University, in the United States. He then walked from the Financial City to Westminster Palace, and now entered Downing Street. This is a typical path for the upper class elites to rise to the top through the Conservative Party.
A previously published survey asked people to describe Sunak in one word. One of them is particularly prominent: rich.
Sunak's wife Akshata Murti is the daughter of an Indian billionaire. Her father is the co-founder of Indian IT service giant Infosys and billionaire Narayana Murti. The latest 2022 rich list released by the British " Times " shows that Sunak and his wife's wealth is estimated to be US$845.5 million, while Queen Elizabeth II's wealth before her death was only US$418.5 million.
Sunak and his wife Akshata Murti. The couple's wealth is estimated to be worth $845.5 million. Jill Rutter, a senior researcher at the London research institute Government Research Institute, said Sunak's wealth may be a political weakness. There are some signs that he is out of touch with the mainstream British people.
In the Conservative Party’s top election this summer, its team broadcast 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 consumption bills, Sunak, a rich Indian son-in-law, has obtained a US green card and has a house in , California, and his wife also evades millions of pounds for applying for a "non-settlement" status. His family property declaration has also been controversial... Although these issues are private ethics, in an era when the situation is unfavorable, the huge contrast between him and ordinary people will affect his career as a prime minister. His former boss Johnson has proved it.
Sunak never commented on the recent turmoil inside and outside the Conservative Party. He only said in this round of election that his goal is to resolve the "serious economic crisis" facing the UK and "unite the Conservatives." Almost all the Conservatives have said similar things nowadays, but the reality is very skinny, and there are factors of instability and disunity inside and outside the party.
When Sunak was not elected, the Labor Party 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 "public authorization". Within the party, many Johnson fans are still unable to let go of Sunak's "betrayal" Johnson this summer, causing the latter to resign, and are still unwilling to fully support him.
On December 1, 2021, then Prime Minister Johnson and Chancellor 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, the UK's inflation rate has returned to a 40-year high of 10.1%, the worst among the G7 (G7 ) countries. In early October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued another warning that the UK is facing serious economic stagnation and the inflation crisis, and the UK's economy is expected to stop growing next year.
On the one hand, inflation is eroding the purchasing power of ordinary British people; on the other hand, Sunak cannot repeat the mistakes of Tras' radical tax cuts and national debt, but how to ensure that people can survive the winter smoothly after tax increases and avoid large-scale poverty and economic uncertainty is a greater challenge.
In the past few months, UK aviation and railway systems employees have launched strikes more than once for income reasons.Now the UK National Health Service System (NHS) has also seen the decrease in the number of medical staff and the extension of the queue for medical services. Therefore, the Royal College of Nursing has called on its union members to take action for the first time in 106 years. The social crisis of the spread of strike waves in various industries is also testing Sunak's professionalism, rationality and patience.
What’s even worse is that in addition to the economic crisis, the issue of unification of the United Kingdom is also placed before Sunak. October 28 is the deadline for the establishment of a local coalition government in Northern Ireland. Before that, due to the opposition between the two major political parties of the Northern Ireland local parliament, the "Republican" (independence) Sinn Fein and the "Political" (unionist) Democratic United Party on whether to amend the "Northern Ireland Protocol", the coalition government has always been unable to be formed.
It can be predicted that Northern Ireland is still in administrative vacancy after this week, and a re-election seems to be the only option. In Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and Royalists have sharp conflicts, regional stability and even unity in the United Kingdom are a long-standing problem for successive British prime ministers.
Currently, the "Amendment to the Northern Ireland Protocol" is under review by parliament, and Sunak faces a dilemma again: if it is eased, the party's opponents will accuse him of being too weak and not conducive to maintaining the unity and stability of the UK; if it is persisted, it will offend the EU , or be subject to retaliatory trade sanctions from the other party, which will trigger a strong backlash from the republicans at home and endanger the stability of Northern Ireland.
has made a big shift in attitude towards China
As for diplomatic issues that are not good at, it is an unavoidable burden for Sunak.
The Ukrainian crisis is related to the energy and inflation crisis within the UK, as well as the overall foreign policy of the Western world, and also to the British government's foreign aid. This year, the UK will provide Ukraine with aid worth 2.3 billion pounds, second only to the United States. At present, it is a consensus between the two parties in the UK to aid Ukraine, but the spillover effect of the Ukrainian crisis, especially the energy, inflation and refugee issues, and the continued pressure from the United States, has determined that Sunak has difficulty finding a way to alleviate the crisis.
On the sensitive issue of China, before deciding to compete for the party leader this year, Sunak made few statements. What attracted attention was his discussion last year on the perspective of the Minister of Finance and the importance of improving the trade relations between the UK and China and building a "mature and balanced" bilateral relations from the perspective of the Minister of Finance last year. At that time, he was still making statements in the way that "we must attach importance to China's important economic influence and adhere to our values, principles and positions", but among the conservatives it seemed much more rational and moderate.
Now that I am going to be the prime minister, Sunak's attitude has changed significantly. When some British media spread rumors that "China supports Sunak's election", he publicly claimed during the campaign at the end of July that China was "the biggest long-term threat to Britain."
He proposed to close 30 Confucius Institutes in the UK to reduce the impact of China's soft power; promised to require British universities to disclose their foreign fund donations details and review their research partners; planned to use MI5 to "fight against Chinese spies" and seek to establish a " NATO -style international cooperation model" to play against China in the field of cybersecurity. He also accused China of "stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities", criticizing the "Belt and Road" plan, saying that tolerance for China was enough. "I will change all this on my first day as Prime Minister." Sunak responded so when Tras accused him of being "weak" to China and Russia.
In this regard, Conservative Party members represented by Ian Duncan Smith do not believe it, saying that the Ministry of Finance led by Sunak has been advancing an economic cooperation agreement with China over the past two years, and the UK and the international community are also surprised by Sunak's 180-degree turn. After becoming Prime Minister, whether Sunak chose to be "mature, balanced" or "unbearable" is worth paying attention to.
In addition, the problem of sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda re-resettlement continues to be stranded. Scotland Chief Minister Nikola Sturgeon In an interview with the BBC, he once again called for an early election and a second independence referendum next year...
The young Sunak entered the Prime Minister's Office earlier than he thought, but in the face of the above long list of "to-do" matters, was he really prepared?
(The author is a member of Chinese Translation Association and an international political columnist)
