Rishi Sunak would have been well advised to spend his Christmas break doing bench presses, or sparring in a ring.
The Prime Minister will be painfully aware that he’s going to have to roll up his sleeves and scrap in 2024, with some bruising battles on the horizon. Not only does he have to turn around his party’s catastrophic outlook ahead of the general election, he needs to convince his warring party that he’s the right person for the job. And if that isn’t enough, he also needs to deliver on some lofty promises.
That means pushing through some hefty projects – such as his mega-expensive Rwanda plan – and growing the economy during a cost-of-living crisis. And there’s no shortage of other problems too, with nurses threatening fresh walkouts over patient safety.
Here we look at some of the big challenges the PM faces in a daunting New Year.
Catastrophic general election outlook
Let’s start with the most obvious one – the general election. From now on everything we see from the PM will be with the upcoming vote in mind, and it’s not looking good for Mr Sunak.
We still don’t know when the election is going to be – although it will definitely be in 2024. The timing of the budget in early March suggests a spring poll could be on the table, but experienced heads suggest autumn is more likely.
What we can be sure of is that polling doesn’t look good, with the Tories tipped to lose around 200 seats. And Mr Sunak’s personal favourability is equally dire, with voters in just four constituencies (out of 632) saying they think he’s the best leader on offer.
And he’s even trailing Keir Starmer in his own constituency. Ouch.
More by-election misery on the cards
But first there’s the banana skin of more by-elections, which have been a grim experience for Mr Sunak so far. He’ll still be fresh from defeat in Mid Beds, Tamworth, Selby and Ainsty, and Somerton and Frome – among others – in 2023.
These proved that majorities of over 20,000 can be overturned, so the PM will be painfully aware that Blackpool South and Wellingborough are very much targets for his opponents. A by-election will be held in Wellingborough after former Tory- MP Peter Bone lost his seat following a bullying probe.
And the recommendation that Scott Benton, who was also elected as a Tory in 2019, is suspended for 35 days over a lobbying scandal means there’s likely to be a vote there too. Mr Benton had a majority of just 4,000, while Mr Bone’s was 18,540 last time around.
And then there’s the next round of council elections in May. Last year the Tories lost around 1,000 seats, and a similar performance will see the pressure ramped up on him again. Which brings us to his next challenge.
Trying to lead party at war with itself
If Mr Sunak is to convince voters he’s the right person to lead the party forward, he will also have to convince his party. And that’s no mean feat – some disgruntled backbenchers are brazenly talking about no confidence votes.
And he’s facing a painful battle with the mafia-esque “five families” – a coalition of right-wing rabble rousers who want his Rwanda legislation beefed up (more on that below). But the moderates in the party say they won’t stomach that, so the PM needs to find a way of keeping the peace.
And another source of danger for the PM is tax cuts. Many MPs are baying for these, which will undoubtedly come at a cost to public services. Cuts to inheritance tax – which will benefit a small number of rich families – is being looked at, but whatever Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announces in March is unlikely to go far enough for some.
One person unlikely to be satisfied is flash-in-a-pan PM Liz Truss. But we’ll come to her shortly. There are also plenty of leaders-in-waiting, with Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt among those tipped with a leadership run.
Ms Braverman could be a particular headache, as she’s been vocal about Mr Sunak’s shortcomings. In a vicious poison pen letter after being sacked, she branded him “weak” and accused him of “betrayal” by not delivering on promises.
Pushing through mega-expensive Rwanda project
The Rwanda project has become synonymous with Tory failure in 2023, and many question Mr Sunak’s wisdom in staking everything on it. In January his Safety of Rwanda Bill will be at the heart of an almighty scrap as he tries to get around a Supreme Court ruling that the deportation scheme is unlawful.
As mentioned above, right wingers want it to go further, while moderates say it’s already pushing the limit of what they can stomach. Mr Sunak won’t be able to rely on support from Labour, which says it will tear up the project if it’s elected.
The PM will be wondering if he was wise to stake his reputation on a project devised before he arrived in No10. Even if he can get flights off the ground by the spring – which ministers say is the target – there’s widespread scepticism about whether it will actually work.
At first it is believed the African nation will have capacity for just 200 people – although the Government says this can be scaled up. And it’s not been cheap, with £240million already handed over and a further £50million due in April, plus more payments beyond that. Having spent over £2million defending the policy in the courts, public patience may run out, with the asylum backlog in the tens of thousands.
Fresh fight over safety in the NHS
When the Tories try to set out their message to voters, they’re likely to try and steer attention away from the NHS. Much of 2023 was spent locked in disputes over pay and working conditions, and they’ll be painfully aware the health service is dangerously overstretched.
With waiting lists making grim reading, the Royal College of Nursing is bracing for a battle over patient safety. The RCN says staff are regularly having to look after 10 to 15 patients at a time due to shortages, and they’re gearing up for a fresh clash with the Government.
In a New Year message RCN chief Pat Cullen said said that while ministers had relented over pay following a series of walkouts, “their desire to fix nursing was simply not as strong as ours”. Ms Cullen said the RCN would be pushing the Government for a “big commitment” on staffing levels and patient safety.
Fallout from HS2 fiasco and London roads
In years to come Mr Sunak will doubtless be haunted by his handling of the HS2 fiasco. In October he finally announced the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the project was being scrapped after days of stonewalling speculation.
It didn’t help that he was in Manchester – delivering his Tory Party conference speech – when he confirmed it. It’s been a Tory flagship project for years, and Boris Johnson and David Cameron were quick to voice their disagreement.
It led to loud accusations that the Government had betrayed the North, and candidates will have a lot of work to convince voters this isn’t the case. This was made even harder after the Department for Transport bragged some of the rerouted HS2 cash had been used to improve road surfaces – in London.
Recession risk as economy slumps
The state of the economy will be a worry for the PM. Latest figures show gross domestic product shrunk by 0.1% between July and September. Mr Sunak is under pressure to deliver growth and is running out of time to do so.
If the next set of figures show a slump, it’ll mean the UK is in recession, which the PM will be keen to avoid. Mr Hunt put a brave face on it, saying the “medium-term outlook” is “far more optimistic than these numbers suggest”.
But with millions of Brits feeling the pinch after more than two years of steep inflation – with has fallen to 3.9% in the year to November – things still feel very bleak. With the cost of living crisis at the heart of what happens at the polls, Mr Sunak is running out of time to convince voters that the Tories are the best option.
Ghost of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss
One thing that Mr Sunak would undoubtedly benefit from would be a period of silence from his two most immediate processors. With the Tory Parliamentary group already fractured, the divisive figures are unlikely to be much help.
But Ms Truss refuses to go quietly, brazenly continuing to blame others for her calamitous economic record. And even less welcome will be Boris Johnson’s upcoming show on GB News, which will give the disgraced ex-PM a chance to talk directly to a televised audience.
Many in the Tory fold have yet to forgive him for resigning from Mr Johnson’s cabinet, and he’s widely blamed for setting off the crisis that led to him standing down. He would much rather not have to keep on revisiting that in 2024.
Pressure to make tax cuts
As mentioned above, the Tory establishment is far from happy that happy about taxes. And we can expect the words “tax burden” to do a lot of heavy lifting in the upcoming election campaign.
It has repeatedly been pointed out – not least by Liz Truss – that the UK currently has the highest tax rate in 70 years. Right-wingers are desperate to see Mr Sunak try to address this before the election.
But the PM will be aware that sweeping tax cuts could collapse public services, and he won’t want a repeat of the crisis Ms Truss triggered when she made unfunded promises in 2022. Ministers are understood to be weighing up huge cuts to inheritance tax – but even Tory MPs acknowledge this is unlikely to make a difference to most.
Crumbling schools and hospitals
In the build-up to the next election, Mr Sunak will also face tough questions about the RAAC crisis. This saw more than 100 schools told there were concerns over crumbling concrete, with a small number forced to shut completely – piling misery on families in September.
There’s also concerns about the state of NHS buildings which are in desperate need of maintenance, not to mention other public buildings such as courthouses. The Government will point out that many of these issues have been decades in the making, but with the Tories in power for the past 13 years it will give opponents an easy attack ground.
Poor performance on law and order
Labour and the Lib Dems will be stepping up their attacks on the Tories over law and order. In the summer damning Home Office figures showed that just 5.7% of offences reported to police result in a charge or summons.
Shockingly the charge rate for sex offences was 3.6%, and for rape it was a tiny 2.1%. Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper branded these figures a “national scandal” earlier this year.
But even if the number of convictions shot up, there’d be a huge problem though with prisons full. The Government has been forced to outline plans to stop jailing criminals who would serve less than a year.
Just last week it emerged 200,000 shoplifting cases were dropped with no suspect identified last year. Expect the record on crime to come under more scrutiny in coming months, making it harder for the Tories to go back to the electorate as the “law and order” party.
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