It’s not so much a question of if, but when. The prime minister is on the way out. We know this by the parade of senior Conservatives who are now ostentatiously “ruling themselves out” of any leadership bid. Take Jeremy Hunt, for example, the former health secretary, who claimed in a recent interview that he wasn’t interested in the top job, but who—ahem—still found time to mention that his “ambition hadn’t completely vanished.” Similarly, an ally of Penny Mordaunt, the trade minister, recently assured the press that she is “focused on doing her job,” which includes “drawing attention to matters of grave concern, in particular the raft of challenges facing Nato.” Mordaunt’s friend ruled her out while simultaneously locating her on some very prime ministerial-sounding, geopolitical terrain. It’s all rather shameless.
Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has appeared in several polished-looking photoshoots and during a trip to Estonia last November posed in the turret of a tank. The attempt to associate herself with Margaret Thatcher, famously pictured in a tank during the Falklands War, was as absurd as it was cack-handed. And then there’s Rishi Sunak, the wide-eyed chancellor, who so eagerly jumped into the shoes of his deposed boss Sajid Javid at the Treasury. Last week, as the PM was being skewered at PMQs, Sunak showed his support by being several hundred miles away in Devon, meeting local business leaders. He might soon be preparing to jump into yet another pair of recently-vacated shoes.
Sunak, Truss, Mordaunt and Hunt—they’re running, alright, and if Sue Gray’s report into parties at No10 knocks Johnson off his perch, then more contenders will no doubt emerge. But the lure of power is blinding them to the reality of what confronts them. At this moment—there can be little doubt about it—the position of Conservative prime minister is the single worst role in British public life. No one in their right mind would want the job now.
Whoever takes over from Johnson will find the prime ministerial in-tray stacked with problems. The first, biggest and nastiest of these will be inflation. It’s been out of fashion in recent decades, has inflation. Central bankers have been longing for a reason to raise interest rates since the crash of 2008 sent them down to zero. But there’s been so little inflationary pressure in the economy they’ve dropped rates through the floor and into what amounts to negative territory.
To get a sense of what inflation can do when it hits, you have to go back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a combination of soaring deficits and the oil price shock sent UK inflation up to 24 per cent. To stop prices spiralling out of control, the government whacked interest rates up to 15 per cent, a level so high that it effectively induced a recession, a policy also pursued in the US. This process of wringing inflation out of the economy worked in the end, but it also turned out to be a very effective way of plunging a country into abject misery.
We are not at such an extreme moment. Not yet, at least. UK inflation is currently at 5.4 per cent. But with prices rising at that speed, the government is soon going to find itself facing a cost-of-living crisis, at the same time as it is also raising National Insurance contributions. That is not a recipe for calm political waters. Quite the opposite, in fact.
If the inflationary spike continues, then interest rates will start to rise, a move that will send a chill through the housing market. Feeling especially chilly will be those who took advantage of the government’s Help to Buy scheme. They were encouraged to buy their homes at the very bottom of the interest rate cycle. When rates start to rise, those mortgages will begin to feel much more expensive.
Of all the contenders, Sunak would be the best placed to present himself as Britain’s economic champion. He saved the economy during Covid—he might argue—and can rescue the country once more. But for all Conservative prime ministerial candidates, and Sunak in particular, the long shadow of Covid will pose a very tough political challenge. At some point an inquiry will deliver its final report on the government’s handling of the pandemic. That report will have to confront, and answer, the question of why more people died of Covid in Britain than in any other western European country. It might also ask why our death toll was over eight times greater than that of Japan, a country with twice our population.
Sunak will be deeply implicated in Britain’s national Covid disaster. He might point out that the vaccine rollout was a success and that he saved the economy, but these arguments will come to nothing when he is faced with the almost unimaginable death count that he and his colleagues delivered. Not only Sunak, but also Truss and Mordaunt—any current minister—would be similarly implicated, savaged in the press and dragged over the coals at PMQs.
The job of Conservative prime minister is a poisoned chalice. It positively brims with venom. A cost-of-living crisis, inflation, a weakening housing market, rising interest rates and the hammer blow of the Covid inquiry—it is a picture of political hell. Who on earth would want to be the lightning rod for all that, with nothing to look forward to except a crushing general election defeat in 2024? But someone will have to take Johnson’s place. They can expect a short, very unpleasant ride.
