Sunak needs a better strategy
Whoever is advising Sunak, they are advising him badly. I was struck by this tidbit in today’s Sunday Times.
MPs understand Sunak’s approach but believe he has been too indulged by his aides, who have let him write his own slogan (“long-term decisions for a brighter future”) and sell himself as he pleases. A member of Vote Leave said: “It’s not exactly ‘take back control’ or ‘get Brexit done’, is it?”
This is a prime minister who is happiest mired in minutiae. Sunak recently told someone he was trying to win over: “I know more about ambulance stacks than anyone else who has done this job.”
Previous prime ministers might have left such details to the health secretary. The parallels with Gordon Brown’s micromanagement send a chill up Tory spines. “Like Gordon, he’s convinced he’s morally and intellectually superior to his predecessors, despite never having won an election,” a former No 10 adviser thundered. “And he never will.”
MPs fear Sunak’s approach to the bottom line ignores the wider political symbolism of axing a high speed link between north and south. At cabinet on Wednesday morning Victoria Prentis, the attorney-general, warned that the change of plan would lead to a mass of lawsuits against the government, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds in legal fees and, potentially, billions in compensation.
It appears Sunak is massively overestimating his abilities, a toxic trait that comes that seems to infect privately educated guys who went to Oxford.
TSE