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      Britain’s Cautionary Tale of Self-Destruction

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      In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.Post-Covid, the geopolitical order has been thrown into tumult. At the beginning of the pandemic, commentators wondered about the fate of the United States, its indifferent political leadership and its apparently diminished “state capacity.” Lately, they have focused more on the sudden weakness of China: its population in decline, its economy struggling more than it has in decades, its “zero Covid” reversal a sign of both political weakness and political overreach, depending on whom you ask.But the descent of Britain is in many ways more dramatic. By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.On the campaign trail and in office, promising a new prosperity, Boris Johnson used to talk incessantly about “leveling up.” But the last dozen years of uninterrupted Tory rule have produced, in economic terms, something much more like a national flatlining. In a 2020 academic analysis by Nicholas Crafts and Terence C. Mills, recently publicized by the economic historian Adam Tooze, the two economists asked whether the ongoing slowdown in British productivity was unprecedented. Their answer: not quite, but that it was certainly the worst in the last 250 years, since the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Which is to say: To find a fitting analogue to the British economic experience of the last decade, you have to reach back to a time before the arrival of any significant growth at all, to a period governed much more by Malthusianism, subsistence-level poverty and a nearly flat economic future. By all accounts, things have gotten worse since their paper was published. According to “Stagnation Nation,” a recent report by a think tank, there are eight million young Brits in the work force today who have not experienced sustained wage growth at all.Over the past several decades, the China boom and then the world’s populist turn have upended one of the basic promises of post-Cold War geopolitics: that free trade would not just bring predictable prosperity but also draw countries into closer political consensus around something like Anglo-American market liberalism. The experience of Britain over the same period suggests another fly in the end-of-history ointment, undermining a separate supposition of that era, which lives on in zombie form in ours: that convergence meant that rich and well-​governed countries would stay that way.For a few weeks last fall, as Liz Truss failed to survive longer as head of government than the shelf life of a head of lettuce, I found myself wondering how a country that had long seen itself — and to some significant degree been seen by the rest of the world — as a very beacon of good governance had become so seemingly ungovernable. It was of course not that long ago that American liberals looked with envy at the British system — admiring the speed of national elections, and the way that new governing coalitions always seemed able to get things done.Post-Brexit, both the outlook for Britain and the quality of its politics look very different, as everyone knows. But focusing on a single “Leave” vote risks confusing that one abrupt outburst of xenophobic populism with what in fact is a long-term story of manufactured decline. As Burn-Murdoch demonstrates in another in his series of data-rich analyses of the British plight, the country’s obvious struggles have a very obvious central cause: austerity. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and in the name of rebalancing budgets, the Tory-led government set about cutting annual public spending, as a proportion of G.D.P., to 39 percent from 46 percent. The cuts were far larger and more consistent than nearly all of Britain’s peer countries managed to enact; spending on new physical and digital health infrastructure, for instance, fell by half over the decade. In the United States, political reversals and partisan hypocrisy put a check on deep austerity; in Britain, the party making the cuts has stayed steadily in power for 12 years.The consequences have been remarkable: a very different Britain from the one that reached the turn of the millennium as Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia.” Real wages have actually declined, on average, over the last 15 years, making America’s wage stagnation over the same period seem appealing by comparison. As the political economist William Davies has written, the private sector is also behaving shortsightedly, skimping on long-term investments and extracting profits from financial speculation instead: “To put it bluntly, Britain’s capitalist class has effectively given up on the future.” Even the right-wing Daily Telegraph is now lamenting that England is “becoming a poor country.”Of course, trends aside, in absolute terms Britain remains a wealthy place: the sixth-largest economy in the world, though its G.D.P. is now smaller than that of India, its former colony. And while the deluded promises of Brexit boosters obviously haven’t come to pass, neither have the bleakest projections: food shortages, crippling labor crunches or economic chaos.Instead, there has been a slow, sighing decay — one that makes contemporary Britain a revealing case study in the way we talk and think about the fates of nations and the shape of contemporary history. Optimists like to point to global graphs of long-term progress, but if the political experience of the last decade has taught us anything, it is that whether the world as a whole is richer than it was 50 years ago matters much less to the people on it today than who got those gains, and how they compare with expectations. Worldwide child mortality statistics are indeed encouraging, as are measures of global poverty. But it’s cold comfort to point out to an American despairing over Covid-era life expectancy declines that, in fact, a child born today can still expect to live longer than one born in 1995, for instance, or to tell a Brit worrying over his or her economic prospects that added prosperity is likely to come eventually — at the same level enjoyed by economies in the former Eastern Bloc.Can Britain even stomach such a comparison? The wealthy West has long regarded development as a race that has already and definitively been won, with suspense remaining primarily about how quickly and how fully the rest of the world might catch up. Rich countries could stumble, the triumphalist narrative went, but even the worst-case scenarios would look something like Japan — a rich country that stalled out and stubbornly stopped growing. But Japan is an economic utopia compared with Argentina, among the richest countries of the world a century ago, or Italy, which has tripped its way into instability over the last few decades. Britain has long since formally relinquished its dreams of world domination, but the implied bargain of imperial retreat was something like a tenured chair at the table of global elders. As it turns out, things can fall apart in the metropole too. Over two centuries, a tiny island nation made itself an empire and a capitalist fable, essentially inventing economic growth and then, powered by it, swallowing half the world. Over just two decades now, it has remade itself as a cautionary tale.David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells), a writer for Opinion and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Uninhabitable Earth.” More

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      Sunak Makes Sweeping Pledges to Britons, Promising Path to Prosperity

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      His promises represented an effort to regain momentum at a time of steep challenges for Britain, but some pressing problems, like the National Health System, defy easy solutions.LONDON — With Britain’s health system and economy both in acute distress, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday laid out a series of promises to restore the country to prosperity and well-being, putting his own political future on the line by challenging Britons to hold him to account.Mr. Sunak’s pledges, delivered in a sweeping speech that echoed a State of the Union address by an American president, represented his effort to grab back momentum after a period in which he replaced a discredited predecessor, Liz Truss, and mopped up after her calamitous foray into trickle-down economics.“No tricks, no ambiguity,” Mr. Sunak said to a polite audience in East London. “We’re either delivering for you or we’re not.”Among the promises, the prime minister said he would cut inflation in half, reignite the economy and reduce waiting times in emergency rooms — ambitious goals for a government that has so far been largely a hostage to a series of disruptive events.But some of Britain’s most pressing problems, like its overwhelmed and investment-starved National Health System, defy easy solutions. Even with more funding, Mr. Sunak said, “people are waiting too long for the care they need,” citing the ambulances lining up in front of hospitals that are short of beds for patients.Budget strains and a cost-of-living crisis have triggered widespread labor unrest, with nurses walking off hospital wards and railway workers shutting down trains. The government is expected to announce new anti-strike legislation, but Mr. Sunak conceded the difficulty of making deals with multiple unions, even though polls show Britons generally support the workers.“I don’t think anybody thinks a 19 percent pay rise is affordable,” he said of the nurses’ wage demands.A crowded King’s Cross station in London last week. Industrial actions by railway workers disrupted travel over the holidays.Hollie Adams/Getty ImagesBeyond that, the British economy is also likely to deteriorate further before it bottoms out and begins to recover. Mr. Sunak acknowledged that sobering reality, noting that many Britons were looking ahead to 2023 with “apprehension.”For Mr. Sunak, who has come under criticism for his below-the-radar style, the speech was an effort to offer much-needed reassurance and to present an image of a sturdy leader at the helm. With two years to go before he must call an election, he billed his five promises — which also included cutting public debt and stopping the perilous flow of migrant boats across the English Channel — as yardsticks with which to judge his government.Understand the Political Situation in BritainA Political Test: Rishi Sunak, who took over as prime minister with the hope of restoring stability to a government in turmoil, is facing formidable political and economic challenges.Worker Strikes: Crippling strikes across multiple industries have Britain’s Conservative government facing a “winter of discontent,” just as a Labour government did 44 years ago.Migrant Crossings: Under growing pressure to curb the arrival of migrants in small boats on the English coast, Mr. Sunak announced plans to tackle Britain’s backlog in asylum claims and to fast-track the return of most Albanians seeking refugee status.Selling Austerity: With an elite pedigree and a privileged lifestyle, Mr. Sunak must now persuade ordinary Britons that they should support his government through a painful ordeal of tax increases and spending cuts.Eschewing the ideological extremism of Ms. Truss or the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too optimism of her predecessor, Boris Johnson, Mr. Sunak struck a nuts-and-bolts tone. Characteristically, his most widely promoted initiative was a plan for all school children to study mathematics until the age of 18.“One of the biggest changes in mind-set we need in education today is to reimagine our approach to numeracy,” said Mr. Sunak, a line that would have been unlikely to turn up in a speech by Mr. Johnson.Still, some experts said there was less to some of Mr. Sunak’s promises than met the eye. The Bank of England has already projected that the inflation rate, currently 10.1 percent, will decline to roughly half that by the end of 2023. That downward trend, in any event, has less to do with fiscal than monetary policy.Mr. Sunak’s pledge to “grow the economy” by the end of the year was noteworthy, given that it is now likely shrinking. But he offered few prescriptions for how the government planned to do that. Britain has struggled with lackluster productivity and stagnant growth for more than a decade.Shopping for groceries in London last November, when inflation hit a record 12.4 percent.Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock“Growth will return, almost certainly in the next year or so, but that’s a very low bar,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at Kings College London. “I would point out that Truss set an explicit growth target of 2.5 percent, so Sunak is being much less ambitious.”Mr. Sunak, a 42-year-old onetime investment banker who served as chancellor of the Exchequer under Mr. Johnson, faces a huge task improving public services. The N.H.S., one of Britain’s most revered institutions, suffered during years of austerity under Conservative-led governments, and was then battered by the pandemic.Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, a London-based research institute, said that by the time of the next general election, Mr. Sunak will need to be able to show the British public that things were improving and that it would therefore be a risk to eject him from power.“Most public services were looking pretty fragile at the time of the pandemic, and the pandemic then piled problems on top of them, including big treatment backlogs in health and exhaustion among the work force” Ms. Rutter said. Those problems, she said, were “compounded by inflation and a big squeeze on public sector pay.’’Most of these underlying weaknesses will remain, even if the government resolves the pay dispute with nurses and ambulance drivers. “Even if Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt write a big check to the National Health Service, that doesn’t solve the capacity problem quickly,” she said, referring to the current chancellor.Similarly, Mr. Sunak has a limited number of options for reviving the economy even if inflation tapers off and interest rates stop rising. Last fall, Mr. Hunt reversed the tax cuts announced by Ms. Truss, replacing them with a raft of tax increases and spending cuts. The reversal restored Britain’s tarnished reputation in financial markets, but at a cost to economic activity at home.Nurses striking outside St. Thomas’ hospital in London last month. Kin Cheung/Associated PressMr. Sunak also needs to manage divisions within his fractious Conservative Party, while knowing that Mr. Johnson harbors ambitions to return to Downing Street, if given the opportunity.“One of the problems for Sunak is that his party is so all over the place that, on a whole range of issues, if he goes one way, he’ll alienate a bunch of them and if he goes another, he’ll alienate another bunch,” Ms. Rutter said.Any attempt to solve labor shortages by relaxing immigration rules, for example, would prompt opposition from a right-wing faction within the Conservative Party, as could any compromise with the European Union over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland.One of Mr. Sunak’s most immediate challenges is cutting down the flotilla of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the channel. On Wednesday, he pledged new laws that would stop the crossings, but provided neither a timetable nor evidence of how deporting illegal migrants would stop the influx.By sketching out his priorities for the next year, however, Mr. Sunak will hope to quiet critics who claimed that he has stayed out of the spotlight as alarm spread over the state of the health service, and as the latest wave of strikes paralyzed parts of the country.The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, was scheduled to make a speech on his agenda on Thursday. Mr. Sunak’s hastily scheduled appearance prevented his rival from exploiting a political vacuum to build on Labour’s polling lead over the Conservatives, now more than 20 percentage points.Like Mr. Sunak, Mr. Starmer is regarded as an uninspiring public speaker. His critics accuse him of excessive caution and of failing to articulate how he would change the country as prime minister.For Mr. Sunak, the challenge is more immediate but no less daunting: convince skeptics that he measures up to the job of prime minister at a time of converging crises. More

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      Your Friday Briefing: The U.S. Will Train More Ukraine Troops

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      Plus: Chinese companies are hit by U.S. trade restrictions.The U.S. said it would more than double the training provided to Ukraine’s military next year.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe U.S. will train more Ukrainian troopsThe Pentagon plans to train 600 to 800 Ukrainian troops — one battalion — each month in advanced battlefield tactics at a base in Germany, starting next year. That’s a major increase: Right now, the U.S. trains about 300 people each month.President Biden approved the broader training effort this week, according to two U.S. officials. The Pentagon has already trained 610 Ukrainians to operate an advanced rocket launcher. The troops have used the system to devastating effect, hitting targets far behind Russian lines.Next year, the U.S. will train bigger groups of Ukrainians on various strategies, such as coordinating ground infantry troops with artillery support. The decision to step up training comes as the administration is poised to send a Patriot antimissile battery, America’s most advanced ground-based air defense system, in response to urgent demands from Kyiv.Other updates:The U.S. announced new sanctions on prominent Russians.A Ukrainian Army surveillance team is using infrared technology to try to locate and strike Russian positions.Moscow’s propagandists are broadcasting clips from American cable news and Chinese media to spin a narrative that Russia is winning.Limiting the flow of technology to global rivals has become a key part of U.S. foreign policy.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesChinese companies hit by U.S. trade restrictionsThe U.S. restricted 36 companies and organizations from accessing American technology that could be used for military purposes, in its latest effort to impede China’s development of advanced semiconductors.In October, the U.S. announced sweeping limits on semiconductor exports to China, both from American companies and those in other countries that use U.S. technology.U.S. officials say that China has increasingly blurred the lines between its military and civilian industries. In response, Chinese diplomats said that the U.S. “has been stretching the concept of national security” and “abusing export control measures.”Details: Yangtze Memory Technology Corporation, which was said to be in talks with Apple to potentially supply components for the iPhone 14, is on the list.Related: Years of Covid restrictions have left behind a collective trauma, Li Yuan writes. Some now want the government to apologize for its hard-line approach, a quixotic hope.Britain’s free health care has long been a national point of pride.Henry Nicholls/ReutersU.K. nurses strike for the first timeBritish nurses went on strike yesterday for the first time in the 74-year history of the National Health Service.The walkout is one of a series of labor actions taking place across Britain this month as sky-high inflation, rising interest rates and a recession put pressure on workers. Rail employees, airport baggage handlers and ambulance workers are also scheduled to stage walkouts over the next several weeks. The nurses are planning a second 12-hour strike next Tuesday.The labor actions come at a time when the health service is in crisis: There have been record delays for ambulance responses and a major backlog for medical procedures, among many other problems.Demands: The nurses are calling for a 19 percent pay increase and better working conditions, which they say will make the profession more attractive and help address staffing shortages. The government has said the pay demands are “unaffordable.”Quotable: “We were out supposedly clapping for our nurses and all of our N.H.S. workers during the pandemic, and here we are treating them like trash,” one supporter said. THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificFiji’s incumbent surged ahead after the app went down. The opposition leader had a lead beforehand.Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFour political leaders in Fiji said the country should stop vote counting after the results app experienced a glitch, The Associated Press reports.India has successfully tested a long-range ballistic missile that could carry nuclear weapons, Al Jazeera reports.Around the WorldTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the leader of the W.H.O., said that Eritrean forces had killed his uncle and 50 others in Tigray, despite a cease-fire.The European Central Bank and the Bank of England both raised interest rates by half a percentage point, in an effort to fight stubborn inflation.A U.N. peacekeeper from Ireland was shot and killed in southern Lebanon.Boris Becker, the former German tennis champion, returned home after he was freed from a British prison. He hid his assets in a bankruptcy case.U.S. NewsThe House passed a bill that would allow Puerto Ricans to vote on whether the island should be an independent country or a U.S. state. Elon Musk said he had sold another $3.6 billion of Tesla’s stock, perhaps in an effort to prop up Twitter. He’s now sold $23 billion this year.New York City will ban sales of dogs, cats and rabbits starting in 2024 in an effort to crack down on commercial breeders.Claudine Gay will be the first Black person to lead Harvard.The Week in CultureHarry spoke about his strained relationship with Prince William, the heir to the throne.Ben Birchhall/Associated PressIn the latest episodes of “Harry & Meghan,” Harry blames a tabloid for Meghan’s miscarriage.Adriano Pedrosa, who turned around São Paulo’s leading art museum, will oversee the 2024 Venice Biennale.The famously private author Thomas Pynchon sold his archive. But there are no photographs of him in it.Inmates in France picked a winner in an offshoot of the Goncourt, the country’s top literary prize.“The Little Mermaid” will be added to the National Film Registry, along with two dozen other films.Our Styles desk picked their best photos of 2022.A Morning Read“It’s a better hobby than playing video games,” said Talil al-Humaidi’s father.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFalconry — one of Qatar’s oldest traditions — now involves modern training methods. Drones drag pigeons high into the sky, to teach the falcons to hunt.SPORTSIn the only other World Cup final of his career, Lionel Messi lost to Germany in 2014. Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesThe World Cup finalFrance will play Argentina at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday in Qatar. (That’s 8:30 p.m. in Delhi, midnight in Seoul and 2 a.m. on Monday in Sydney.)Argentina will rally behind Lionel Messi, who has never won a World Cup. Now, he has a final, glorious chance at soccer immortality. At 35, Messi is arguably the finest player of all time.France, though, has his heir apparent: Kylian Mbappé, 23, who is the tournament’s leading scorer. France won the last World Cup, in 2018, and is now the first country in over 20 years to qualify for consecutive finals.What else: Croatia and Morocco will play on Saturday for third place.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookAndrew Scrivani for The New York TimesMake pancakes for breakfast this weekend.What to Read“Eccentric Lives,” a collection of cheeky obituaries from Britain’s Daily Telegraph, includes one about a viscount who shot at a hot-air balloon.What to Watch“The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari” recounts an eruption off the coast of New Zealand that left several groups of tourists struggling to survive.ExerciseDo you really need to stretch?TravelIn just a weekend in Seoul, you can hike fortress walls, bike along the Han River and taste mung bean pancakes at a covered market.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Space between (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Have a lovely weekend! I’ll be back on Monday. — AmeliaP.S. Sam Stejskal of The Athletic joined CNN to debate who’s the greatest soccer player ever.“The Daily” is about Russia’s draft. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      For Sunak, Like Biden, Dullness Could Be a Secret Weapon

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      For all their differences, President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain share a challenge: operating in the wake of a larger-than-life predecessor. They have tactics in common, too.LONDON — For years, Boris Johnson and Donald J. Trump were viewed as populist twins — flamboyant, scandal-scarred, norm-busting figures, acting in a trans-Atlantic political drama. With both out of office, at least for now, a more timely and intriguing comparison is between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Biden.Though they differ by obvious metrics — young vs. old, conservative vs. liberal — Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden are using strikingly similar methods to govern in the wake of their larger-than-life predecessors. Both have tried to let the steam out of their countries’ hothouse politics by making a virtue of being, well, a little boring.The similarities are more than stylistic: Both lead parties that are divided between centrist and more extreme forces, whether to the right, for Mr. Sunak, or the left, for the American president. And both are dogged by poor poll numbers, in part because of economic ills but also because their pragmatic, undramatic style can seem ill-suited to the polarized politics of post-Brexit Britain and post-Trump America.For Mr. Sunak, who took office in October amid an economic crisis and after months of political upheaval that left his Conservative Party exhausted and unpopular, Mr. Biden might offer a blueprint for political rehabilitation.Two years into his term, Mr. Biden has confounded the skeptics, with the Democratic Party performing unexpectedly well in the midterm elections, in defiance of historical trends that typically punish the party in power.“Boris and Trump were generalists, short on details and ideologically flexible, but the sheer force of their personality brought them to the top, and eventually led to their downfalls,” said Frank Luntz, an American political strategist and pollster who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University.“Rishi and Biden are the exact opposite,” Mr. Luntz continued. “Not particularly great communicators, quite often trapped in the weeds of details, but able to move their governments forward because of their detailed knowledge and experience.”President Biden and Jill Biden after returning from Camp David on Sunday.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesCircumstances forced both leaders to press for emergency legislation right off the bat: Mr. Biden, to cushion the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic; Mr. Sunak, to counter the disastrous foray into trickle-down tax policy engineered by his immediate predecessor, Liz Truss. That spooked financial markets, sent the British pound into a tailspin and drove up interest rates.After passing his Covid relief bill, Mr. Biden managed to push through ambitious legislation to combat climate change. With narrow majorities in the House and especially in the Senate, he had to fend off progressives in his party and win over centrists like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who held up that bill until he negotiated compromises with the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Mr. Sunak, who has a more than 70-seat majority in Parliament, may not face as much legislative needle-threading in passing his package of tax increases and spending cuts. But he does have to contend with an increasingly unruly Tory Party, which is making it difficult for him to settle a trade dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland, overhaul Britain’s cumbersome planning rules for home building, or even construct onshore windmills.“He’s being pushed around by various factions in the Tory Party,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the United States. “Biden, by contrast, is quite resolute about his moderate, centrist principles.”While Mr. Sunak’s allies make no explicit comparisons between him and Mr. Biden, several have claimed his quiet, unflashy competence is restoring stability after the political roller-coaster of the last three months. On returning to the cabinet as a senior minister, Michael Gove declared “boring is back,” and joked that it was the government’s “utter determination to try to be as dull as possible.”Asked in an interview whether the motif of Mr. Sunak’s leadership was that “boring is the new sexy,” Mark Harper, the transport secretary, smiled and replied: “What he’s about is a government that’s grown up, that grips the issues that people are concerned about and gets on with governing.”Mr. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, returning to 10 Downing Street last month after visiting a food and drinks market promoting British small businesses.Pool photo by Toby MelvilleUnlike Mr. Biden, 80, whose aides still periodically find themselves having to clean up unguarded statements, Mr. Sunak, 42, rarely commits a gaffe. His cautious persona and stilted speaking style have drawn comparisons to John Major, who in 1990 succeeded a more forceful prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.Mr. Major’s electoral record was mixed: He surprised many by winning a modest majority of 21 in the general election in 1992. But that victory was followed swiftly by a financial crisis that sapped his reputation and paved the way for a landslide victory five years later by the Labour Party leader, Tony Blair.This time, the crisis struck before Mr. Sunak took office. But it leaves him with no more than two years to rescue his party before the next election, and he faces the headwinds of soaring inflation, rising interest rates, labor unrest and a recession. Depending on when Mr. Sunak chooses to call that vote, there is a chance that American voters could be electing a president around the same time.Will Mr. Biden be in that race? The chances of his running again rose after the midterms, not to mention the president’s proposal to rearrange the Democratic Party’s primary calendar, so that South Carolina, which resurrected his presidential fortunes in 2020, will now vote first, ahead of the Iowa caucus.There is no evidence that Mr. Biden and Mr. Sunak talked politics in their first face-to-face meeting as leaders at a summit in Indonesia last month. Indeed, given their disparity in age, background and politics, there is little indication they will develop the kind of rapport enjoyed by, say, Mr. Blair and President Bill Clinton. When the Tories elected Mr. Sunak as leader, Mr. Biden hailed it as a “groundbreaking milestone,” though he added, “As my brother would say, ‘Go figure.’”At the moment, the oddsmakers are betting against Mr. Sunak. There is even speculation that if the Conservatives get thrashed in local elections next May, his enemies might move against him and try to reinstall Mr. Johnson. But Mr. Sunak’s allies hope for a Biden-like surprise, which could give him a solid base for the next general election (it must take place by January 2025).Given Labour’s formidable lead in opinion polls — and a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who rivals Mr. Sunak in competence over charisma — few analysts see a path for Mr. Sunak to a convincing victory. But some think the outcome could be much closer than some of Labour’s supporters now expect. For one thing, Mr. Sunak’s poll ratings exceed those of his battered party, which is the reverse of Mr. Biden and the Democrats before the midterm elections.“There is a big difference between what voters think of the Conservative Party and what voters think of Sunak,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The big question now is whether the Tory Party drags Sunak’s ratings down, or Sunak drags the Tory Party’s ratings up.”Those are the same questions handicappers were asking about Mr. Biden in the anxious days leading up to the midterms. If both he and Mr. Sunak are in still office in 2025, it will be proof that boring is not only back, but political gold. More

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      Northern Ireland Likely to Hold New Election After Failing to Form a Government

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      Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary is expected to announce on Friday that a new election would be held in December after six months of fruitless efforts to convene Parliament.LONDON — Voters in Northern Ireland made history in May when they turned the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, into the largest in the North. Now, they are likely to have to go back to the polls after the main pro-unionist party paralyzed the power-sharing government by refusing to take part in it.Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, is expected to announce on Friday that a new election would be held, possibly on Dec. 15, following six months of fruitless efforts to convene the assembly at the Stormont Parliament in Belfast. The deadline for forming a government expired at 12:01 a.m. Friday.It is not the first time that Northern Ireland’s experiment in power sharing has broken down. The assembly was suspended from 2002 to 2007, and again from 2017 to 2020. This time, the prospects for a swift resolution seem bleak, with Northern Ireland caught up in a larger standoff over trade between Britain and the European Union.Sinn Fein’s victory in May was a watershed in Northern Ireland’s politics, elevating a nationalist party that many still associate with paramilitary violence to leadership in the territory. It entitled Sinn Fein to name Michelle O’Neill, its leader, to the post of first minister in the government, reflecting its status as the party with the most seats in the assembly.But on Thursday, the parties failed in a last-gasp effort to elect a speaker of the assembly, which would have cleared the way to appoint ministers to run the government. Ms. O’Neill criticized the unionists for a “failure of leadership,” after they refused to nominate ministers or a speaker.A poster for Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Fein in April in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesPolitical analysts predicted that Sinn Fein could expand its two-seat advantage over its main rival — the Democratic Unionist Party, or D.U.P. — by drawing voters who are frustrated by the breakdown of the government and blame the D.U.P., which has refused to take part until Britain overhauls the trade arrangements for Northern Ireland.More on the Political Turmoil in BritainMaking History: Rishi Sunak is the first person of color and the first Hindu to become prime minister of Britain — a milestone for a nation that is more and more ethnically diverse but also roiled by occasional anti-immigrant fervor.A Breakthrough, With Privilege: While Mr. Sunak’s rise to prime minister is a significant moment for Britain’s Indian diaspora, his immense wealth has made him less relatable to many.Economic Challenges: Mr. Sunak already has experience steering Britain’s public finances as chancellor of the Exchequer. That won’t make tackling the current crisis any easier.Political Primaries: Are primary elections of British leaders driving Britain’s dysfunction? The rise and fall of Liz Truss offers some lessons.But the Democratic Unionists might pick up a seat or two as well by consolidating the unionist vote. These people favor the North remaining part of the United Kingdom but had split their votes between three competing unionist parties. The D.U.P.’s attacks on the trade rules, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, have united and hardened opposition to it within the unionist population.Adding to the anger, Sinn Fein officials have said that because of the changed political landscape, the Irish Republic should have a consultative role in running Northern Ireland, along with Britain, if the deadlock over a power-sharing government cannot be broken. The British government said it was not considering “joint authority” over the North, though it is wary of a return to direct rule.While the D.U.P. is unlikely to overtake Sinn Fein, analysts said, it may shore up what had been an eroding position. That would vindicate the party’s hard-line strategy, analysts said, and give it little incentive to return to government if Britain struck a compromise with the European Union on the protocol.“Strong unionists are very united on the idea that the protocol must be scrapped,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of political sociology at Queen’s University, Belfast. “My worry is that even if the U.K. and E.U. come up with an agreement on the protocol, it will be very difficult for that agreement to satisfy the unionists.Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, on Thursday at the Stormont Parliament in Belfast.Charles McQuillan/Getty ImagesMr. Heaton-Harris, who was reappointed Northern Ireland secretary this week by Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said he would prefer to call a new election rather than try to delay it or pass legislation in the British Parliament.It was shaping up as an early foreign policy headache for Mr. Sunak, who has spoken of wanting to reset relations between Britain and the European Union. Tensions over trade in Northern Ireland have simmered since the Brexit referendum in 2016 and rose significantly in June after his predecessor, Liz Truss, who was foreign secretary at the time, introduced legislation that would unilaterally overturn parts of the protocol. Boris Johnson, who was then prime minister, regularly reinforced that position.Though Mr. Sunak said he was committed to getting that bill through Parliament, some analysts said they believed he would take a more pragmatic approach with Brussels, calculating that Britain cannot afford a trade war with the European Union at a time when its economy is grappling with double-digit inflation and a looming recession.The result of a painstaking negotiation between London and Brussels, the protocol was meant to account for the hybrid status of Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom but shares an open border with neighboring Ireland, a member of the European Union. To keep that border open, Mr. Johnson had accepted checks on goods flowing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland.Unionists complain that the checks have added onerous layers of bureaucracy to trade and driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. For months, Britain has tried to renegotiate the rules with European officials to make them less cumbersome. But unionists want the protocol essentially swept away, which Brussels is certain to reject on the grounds that it would threaten the single market.Belfast in April. Sinn Fein favors the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“The D.U.P. and Sinn Fein should both gain seats” in the next election, said David Campbell, the chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents pro-union paramilitary groups that vehemently oppose the protocol. “Hard to tell which comes out on top. The real problem is how to resolve problems after.”For Sinn Fein, which favors the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, the paralysis confronts it with a decision: whether to give up on power sharing, which was enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence, and focus its energies on uniting North and South.“If the sense is the D.U.P. is against the Good Friday Agreement,” Professor Hayward said, “there is a certain rationale for the Sinn Fein to go for their alternative.” More

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      Rishi Sunak’s Challenge: Unifying the Party and Fixing the Economy

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      The Conservative Party is fractured and Britain’s public finances are battered. That will test the political skills of a leader who has been involved in national politics for only seven years.LONDON — Rishi Sunak took over as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday, the third in seven weeks, hoping to slow the revolving door at 10 Downing Street and restore stability to a government in turmoil.But as he assembled a cabinet and began to confront a grave economic crisis, Mr. Sunak faced formidable political challenges, for which analysts said his seven-year career in national politics had not fully prepared him. The swift, truncated nature of his election may further complicate his task.Having been elected with the votes of some 200 Conservative Party lawmakers, but not the party’s rank-and-file members, Mr. Sunak could have trouble claiming a mandate to lead a deeply fractured party, let alone the whole country. With his government forced into spending cuts and tax increases, he will have few resources with which to reward either his lawmakers or the public.“He’s inheriting a divided party with a large number of Conservative M.P.s and members who believe he has no legitimate mandate,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent. “That’s compounded by the fact that the party is in a free-fall and it’s not clear it has a parachute.”And yet, on a day of now-familiar rituals, as Mr. Sunak, the fifth prime minister in six years, traveled to Buckingham Palace to be anointed by King Charles III, there was also a calm in British politics — something that had been missing since Boris Johnson’s chaotic departure this past summer.Much of that owed to the 42-year-old prime minister himself: His well-received address to the nation on Tuesday showed a degree of political awareness, conceding the mistakes of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and promising improvement, while also reaching out to her and Mr. Johnson.“I will place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government’s agenda,” a somber and solitary Mr. Sunak said on Downing Street, after returning from the palace. “This will mean difficult decisions to come.”Mr. Sunak and King Charles III in Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.Pool photo by Aaron ChownHis decision to appear there without his wife or daughters, and to dispense with the cheering staff members that greeted Ms. Truss last month, lent his arrival a brisk, businesslike tone. It also underlined the contrast between Mr. Sunak and his predecessor, which he said would extend beyond optics.A former chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Sunak is expected to pull Britain back to more mainstream policies after Ms. Truss’s experiment in trickle-down economics, which rattled financial markets and badly damaged Britain’s fiscal reputation.More on the Political Turmoil in BritainMaking History: Rishi Sunak is the first person of color and the first Hindu to become prime minister of Britain — a milestone for a nation that is more and more ethnically diverse but also roiled by occasional anti-immigrant fervor.Economic Challenges: Sunak already has experience steering Britain’s public finances as chancellor of the Exchequer. That won’t make tackling the current crisis any easier.Political Primaries: Are primary elections of British leaders driving Britain’s dysfunction? The rise and fall of Liz Truss offers some lessons.Lifelong Allowance: As a former prime minister, Ms. Truss is eligible for a taxpayer-funded annual payout for the rest of her life. Some say she shouldn’t be allowed to receive it.“Mistakes were made,” Mr. Sunak said. “Not borne of ill will or bad intentions. Quite the opposite, in fact. But mistakes, nonetheless. And I have been elected as leader of my party, and your prime minister, in part, to fix them.”Mr. Sunak quickly set about selecting a cabinet remarkable for its familiar faces. He retained Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor whom Ms. Truss installed after ousting Kwasi Kwarteng, the architect of ill-fated tax cuts. Mr. Hunt, who has soothed the markets, is scheduled to present a more detailed fiscal plan on Oct. 31.Mr. Sunak also kept on Ben Wallace as defense secretary and James Cleverly as foreign secretary, even though both had backed Mr. Johnson over him in the leadership race. And he retained Penny Mordaunt, who mounted a spirited challenge to him in that contest, as leader of the House of Commons.It was a striking contrast to Ms. Truss, whose cabinet consisted almost entirely of people who had backed her for leader, and it seemed to signal a recognition by Mr. Sunak that he could not succeed by drawing dividing lines in the party.Clockwise from top left: Jeremy Hunt, Ben Wallace, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly.AFP — Getty; EPA, via Shutterstock; EPA, via Shutterstock; EPA, via Shutterstock; AFP — Getty; AFP — GettyMost conspicuously, Mr. Sunak reappointed Suella Braverman as home secretary, a job she had been forced out of only a week ago, ostensibly because she breached security rules. Her appointment was a gesture to the Conservative Party’s right flank: Ms. Braverman is a hard-liner who wants to cut immigration numbers. She said her “dream” was to see flights deporting asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.Mr. Sunak did reward some loyalists, naming Dominic Raab, who campaigned faithfully for him, as deputy prime minister and justice minister, posts he held under Mr. Johnson.Ms. Truss made her own appearance at Downing Street in the morning with her family, after formally submitting her resignation to the king, just seven weeks after she had been anointed by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in one of her last official acts, two days before her death.In defiant, unapologetic farewell remarks, Ms. Truss took credit for protecting people from rising energy bills. Reiterating her belief in lower taxes and a fast-growing economy, she said, “I am more convinced than ever we need to be bold and confront the challenges that we face.”Taking a page from Mr. Johnson, who likened himself to the retiring fifth-century Roman politician Cincinnatus, Ms. Truss quoted the Roman philosopher Seneca: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”Liz Truss after her farewell remarks on Downing Street on Tuesday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Truss’s misfires have made Mr. Sunak’s job even more difficult. Britain’s straitened public finances and its higher borrowing costs — a consequence, in part, of rising interest rates in reaction to her policies — will require painful spending cuts. That will further test Mr. Sunak’s political skills. Last summer, he struggled to sell his tough-love message to party members, who preferred Ms. Truss’s supply-side remedies.“The ideological riddle that Sunak has to try to solve is how the Conservative Party, amid a profound and prolonged economic crisis, can reconnect with the voters it attracted after Brexit,” Professor Goodwin said.Mr. Sunak did reappoint Michael Gove, a seasoned minister, to a post overseeing efforts to “level up” struggling cities in the Midlands and north of England with more prosperous London. That is important to retaining working-class voters who propelled the Conservatives to their landslide general election victory in 2019.As chancellor, Mr. Sunak was lionized when he doled out billions of pounds to people who had lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. He sponsored another good-news program, “Eat Out to Help Out,” which subsidized meals at restaurants to revive the industry after lockdowns.But when it came to withdrawing those benefits and raising taxes, Mr. Sunak’s reputation unsurprisingly suffered. During his campaign against Ms. Truss, he struggled to stick to his message of fiscal conservatism. Under pressure from her promises of tax cuts, he said he would temporarily suspend the value-added tax, a sales tax, on energy bills — something that he had earlier rejected.“He doesn’t have a lot of what I’d call trench-fighting experience,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “His progress through the party has been so rapid that he hasn’t spent years forging friendships with colleagues who’ve got his back come what may.”Mr. Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty at the British Asian Trust Reception at the British Museum in London, in February.Vickie Flores/EPA, via ShutterstockProfessor Bale said Mr. Sunak was also thin-skinned about criticism he faced last spring of his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian technology billionaire, for her privileged tax status. Her so-called non-domicile status allowed her to avoid paying taxes in Britain on millions of pounds of her global income (she eventually agreed to pay British taxes).While Mr. Sunak’s sensitive reaction to the attacks against his wife may have been understandable, he is likely to face many more of them in the coming months from an opposition Labour Party that will seize on his extreme wealth to paint him as out of touch with the anxieties of ordinary people.“They don’t care that he and his family are filthy rich,” Professor Bale said. “They do care they didn’t seem to be paying their fair share. That — and his heated outdoor swimming pool and his house in Santa Monica — is going to make it difficult for him to argue, ‘We’re all in this together.’”Political analysts said the sheer magnitude of Ms. Truss’s failure was Mr. Sunak’s biggest asset. The Conservatives are trailing Labour by more than 30 percentage points in some polls. Even those who ardently opposed Mr. Sunak recognize that he is likely their last hope of avoiding a general election rout that would sweep hundreds of Conservative lawmakers out of their seats.“His M.P.s have looked over the edge of the precipice and know that, unless they get behind the guy, who is basically their last chance, they’re heading for a huge fall,” Professor Bale said. “Basically, it’s Rishi or bust.”Mr. Sunak is Britain’s third prime minister in seven weeks. Hannah Mckay/Reuters More