Sunak, Rishi (1980- )

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Rishi Sunak Promises to Honor Britain’s Climate Commitments at COP28 Summit

      by

      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain rejected claims on Friday that he had lowered his country’s net-zero ambitions and pledged to meet targets in a more pragmatic way.At a news conference, Mr. Sunak, who was spending just a few hours at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, committed 1.6 billion pounds, or about $2 billion, for international climate finance projects, including for renewable energy and forests, fulfilling a promise to spend a total of £11.6 billion over five years.Mr. Sunak said that Britain was “leading by example” but then added swiftly that excessive costs from the transition to net zero should not be borne by ordinary Britons.“We won’t tackle climate change unless we take people with us,” he said. “Climate politics is close to breaking point.”“The British people care about the environment,” added Mr. Sunak, who has been trailing in opinion polls ahead of an election that is likely to take place next year. “They know that the costs of inaction are intolerable, but they also know that we have choices about how we act. So, yes, we will meet our targets but we will do it in a more pragmatic way which doesn’t burden working people.”Mr. Sunak has recently stressed his determination to limit costs to Britons, whose living standards are being squeezed by inflation as their economy stagnates.That emphasis on Friday from the British prime minister was in striking contrast to the more idealistic tone of King Charles III, a lifelong supporter of environmental causes, who told leaders earlier at the same meeting that “hope of the world” rested on the decisions they took.Britain has been regarded as one of the global leaders in combating climate change, but this year Mr. Sunak signaled a shift in policy when he said he would delay a ban on the sale of gas and diesel cars by five years, and lower targets for replacing gas boilers.That followed a surprise victory in July in a parliamentary election in northwestern London, where his Conservative Party campaigned against moves by the city’s Labour mayor to expand an air-quality initiative that raised fees for drivers of older, more polluting vehicles.On Friday, Mr. Sunak emphasized pragmatism in climate policy even as he insisted that Britain had “done more than others up until now” and would continue to do so.When asked about the brevity of his visit and why he would spend more time in his plane than on the ground in Dubai, Mr. Sunak responded: “I wouldn’t measure our impact here by hours spent. I would measure it by the actual things we are doing.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Rishi Sunak’s Dilemma: When to Hold an Election He Looks Poised to Lose

      by

      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is 20 percentage points behind in opinion polls. But history suggests the timing of a vote might make a difference.No question in British politics will be more regularly asked, and reliably brushed aside, over the next few months than when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to call the country’s next general election.He must do so by January 2025. The conventional wisdom is that with his Conservative Party trailing the opposition Labour Party by 20 percentage points in the polls, Mr. Sunak will wait as long as he can. Given the fact that Britons do not like electioneering around Christmas or in the dead of winter, that would suggest a vote next fall.But some of Mr. Sunak’s colleagues last week pushed for an earlier timetable. Having lost a critical legal ruling on his flagship immigration policy, the prime minister came under pressure from the right of his party to go to the polls in the spring if the House of Lords blocks the government’s efforts to revamp legislation to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.Turning the election into a referendum on immigration might deflect attention from the economic woes plaguing Britain. But that assumes voters could be persuaded to swing to the Conservatives out of a fear of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats, rather than blaming the party for a stagnant economy, a cost-of-living crisis and hollowed out public services.Britain’s Supreme Court last week struck down the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda as unlawful. But Mr. Sunak has vowed to keep the matter alive by negotiating a new treaty with the East African country that would include a legally binding commitment not to remove migrants sent there by Britain — one of the court’s objections.Mr. Sunak also pledged emergency legislation that would declare Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers. It remains unclear whether that would survive legal challenges and in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament that has the right to review the legislation and could block it (though its appetite for a full-scale clash with the government was not clear.)“I know the British people will want this new law to pass so we can get flights off to Rwanda,” Mr. Sunak told reporters last week. “Whether it’s the House of Lords or the Labour Party standing in our way, I will take them on because I want to get this thing done and I want to stop the boats.”Asylum seekers disembark from a lifeboat in Dungeness, England, after being picked up at sea while crossing the English Channel.Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolitical analysts say immigration remains a resonant issue in England’s north and Midlands, where support for the Conservatives in 2019 gave the party a landslide general election victory. Those voters, many of whom traditionally supported the Labour Party, were drawn to the Tory slogan, “Get Brexit done.”“Immigration is now the top priority for 2019 Conservative Party voters, above even the cost-of-living crisis and the dire state of the country’s National Health Service,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has written about populism and identity politics.“This means, in short, that Rishi Sunak has no way of winning the next election unless he connects with these voters by reducing immigration and regaining control of the country’s borders,” he said. “Yet both of those things currently look unlikely.”Far from accelerating the date of an election, Professor Goodwin argued that the salience of immigration would pressure Mr. Sunak to delay a vote. It will take months to surmount the legal problems with the existing policy, the professor said, let alone begin one-way flights to Rwanda.Other experts are more skeptical that an immigration-dominated election would play to the advantage of the Tories. Most voters view the party negatively on immigration, said Sophie Stowers, a researcher at the U.K. in a Changing Europe, a think tank in London. The number of people crossing the channel has remained stubbornly high since Mr. Sunak became prime minister, while legal migration has soared.“To me, it seems counterintuitive to bring attention to an issue where you have a poor image with the public,” Ms. Stowers said.The question is whether the Conservatives would do even worse if the election were decided on the economy, which matters more than migration to voters at large, according to opinion polls. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation. But he has yet to achieve the other two: reviving growth and reducing public debt.Clothing for sale in London last month. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation.Hannah Mckay/ReutersIt’s not yet clear that the economic news will improve between the spring and fall, analysts said. While inflation has cooled, the lingering effect of higher interest rates — propelled upward by Liz Truss’s market-shaking tax policies last year — is still cascading through the economy in the form of higher home mortgage rates.Historically, many successful prime ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, called elections earlier than they needed, rather than risk becoming the victim of unforeseen events. They usually opted for the summer months, when the weather — and the public mood — is typically better, although Boris Johnson successfully broke that pattern with his victory in December 2019.Mr. Sunak’s room for maneuver is limited. One option would be holding the vote in May 2024 to coincide with local elections, or in June. Another possibility would be October or November, which would coincide with elections in the United States. But the possibility of a victory by Donald J. Trump could have an unpredictable effect, potentially pushing some British voters to a more centrist option. As a last resort, Mr. Sunak could hold off until Jan. 28, 2025.Some of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors paid a high price for miscalculating the timing of elections. Despite speculation that he would call an election in 1978, the Labour Party prime minister James Callaghan delayed voting until the following year. Labor unrest escalated into what became known as the “winter of discontent,” sweeping Mrs. Thatcher to victory in 1979.Margaret Thatcher, campaigning in 1979, won election as prime minister after the Labour Party incumbent, James Callaghan, decided not to call an election the previous year.Press Association, via Associated PressGordon Brown, another Labour prime minister, had been expected to capitalize on his early popularity by calling an election soon after taking over from Tony Blair in 2007. Instead, he delayed, ultimately losing power in 2010.Theresa May made the opposite decision, calling an early election in 2017 in which she lost her majority, though probably more because of her unpopular agenda and poor campaign skills than bad timing.“Once the election is underway, everything is on the table,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “You lose control of the agenda.”Trying to build an election campaign around the issue of small boats bringing migrants is likely to fail, Mr. Kellner added, suggesting Mr. Sunak will only call an early vote if he calculates he has a realistic prospect of keeping his job.“If, at the point when you have to make a decision, you have no chance of winning, then you might as well wait,” he said, “because maybe there is a five percent chance of winning in six months, and a five percent chance is better than no chance.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Under Pressure, U.K.’s Sunak Tries Another Cabinet Reset With a Swerve to Center

      by

      After more than a year as prime minister, Rishi Sunak, a Conservative, has failed to close a yawning gap in the polls. On Monday he did something new.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain fired one of his most senior and divisive ministers on Monday, in a reshuffle of his top team that unexpectedly brought a centrist predecessor, David Cameron, back into government.The departure of Suella Braverman as home secretary and the surprise return of Mr. Cameron as foreign secretary were the latest in a series of convulsions that have rocked the governing Conservative Party since the fateful Brexit referendum that Mr. Cameron called in 2016, and signaled the peril facing Mr. Sunak as he nears a general election expected next year.After 13 years in Downing Street, the Conservatives’ grip on power appears to be slipping, with the party trailing Labour by around 20 points in the polls against a challenging economic backdrop, with sluggish growth and inflation eroding living standards, and a public sector under acute strain after years of Conservative-led austerity.Mr. Sunak has tried various gambits to address his party’s unpopularity with voters, weakening environmental targets, pledging to defend motorists and promising tougher sentencing for serious criminals. None seem to have worked.At the same time, Ms. Braverman, who is seen as a rival within the party, had become increasingly emboldened as home secretary, raising her profile and appearing to prepare the ground for a leadership bid if the Conservatives lose the election as many expect.Last week she wrote an extraordinary opinion article in The Times of London, which was not authorized by Downing Street, in which she criticized the police for not seeking to ban a pro-Palestinian protest march in the capital, and described the demonstrators as “hate marchers” and “Islamists.”Protesters in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, on Vauxhall Bridge in London, on Saturday.Hollie Adams/ReutersAfter counterprotesters clashed with the police on Saturday, critics accused Ms. Braverman of inflaming tensions and encouraging far-right demonstrators onto the streets, and her position was judged untenable by Downing Street.Mr. Sunak and Ms. Braverman spoke by phone on Monday, and in the shuffle of jobs that followed her departure, she was replaced by the more emollient former foreign secretary, James Cleverly, freeing up his position for Mr. Cameron.Both men are regarded as moderates and the changes appeared to signal a shift away from the divisive politics that were championed by Ms. Braverman, whose focus on cultural issues had become a feature of Mr. Sunak’s government in recent months.Neither of the two appointments was good news for the right-wing faction of the Conservative Party where Ms. Braverman had a small but vocal group of supporters.Nor was Mr. Sunak’s decision to keep Jeremy Hunt as chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hunt’s resistance to offering tax cuts has antagonized a wider group of Conservative lawmakers. He, like Mr. Cameron, campaigned against Brexit in 2016, but Mr. Hunt has made controlling inflation his priority and says that reducing taxes will have to wait.The return to the cabinet of Mr. Cameron may remind some voters of the political chaos that he triggered in 2016 when Britons ignored his recommendation and narrowly voted to leave the European Union. Mr. Sunak is the fourth Conservative leader to have become prime minister since Mr. Cameron stood aside after the referendum result, which sent shock waves around Europe.David Cameron, Britain’s new foreign secretary, departing 10 Downing Street on Monday.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sunak restored some stability when he succeeded Liz Truss as prime minister last year, but his latest reshuffle risks reopening ideological divisions that have dogged the party in recent years. Though the salience of Brexit has faded in British politics, Mr. Cameron — who led the campaign against it — will now be partly responsible for promoting the policy around the globe.Yet, while bringing back Mr. Cameron is a political gamble, Mr. Sunak may have judged the risk worthwhile. He has limited time to win back voters, or possibly even to limit the scale of a defeat in the looming election.Ms. Braverman had lost her job as home secretary once before, under the short-lived government of Ms. Truss, but she was given it back by Mr. Sunak when he entered Downing Street. She used her position in cabinet to push hard-right policies and embraced polarizing rhetoric, describing migration as a “hurricane,” the arrival of asylum seekers on the British coast as an “invasion” and homelessness as a “lifestyle choice.”While Mr. Sunak’s language was more measured, he supported most of her ideas — in particular, her pursuit of a policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. That faces a critical test on Wednesday when the country’s Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on its legality following a series of challenges.Mr. Sunak visiting an Ikea distribution center in Dartford, Kent, in June.Pool photo by Jack HillThe decision to bring back Mr. Cameron, who led the Conservatives between 2005-16, seemed at odds with Mr. Sunak’s recent claims at his party’s annual conference to be an agent of change.It also underscored a constitutional requirement of Britain’s political system that ministers hold a seat in Parliament so they can propose legislation and be held to account by fellow lawmakers. As a consequence Mr. Sunak on Monday nominated Mr. Cameron for a seat in the House of Lords, Parliament’s less powerful, unelected upper chamber.It is not the first time in the modern era that a foreign secretary has been a member of the House of Lords, rather than the House of Commons: Peter Carington, who became Lord Carrington — and as such, gained a second r in his name — filled that role between 1979-82. He resigned amid the Falklands crisis, when troops from Argentina occupied a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic in 1982, sparking a brief conflict.While the situation is not unique, Mr. Cameron’s status as a member of the House of Lords has already raised tensions among lawmakers in the House of Commons as he will normally speak not to them, but to an assembly of unelected members of the upper chamber.Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the House of Commons, said on Monday that he was looking into ways in which the new foreign secretary could be held accountable by elected lawmakers. It was “especially important” that they should be able to scrutinize his work, “given the gravity of the current international situation,” Mr. Hoyle said in Parliament. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Prime Minister, Is Probably Doomed

      by

      When Rishi Sunak became prime minister of Britain a year ago, there was little sense of celebration. The markets were in free fall after the disastrous 49-day tenure of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and the government was in disarray. Mr. Sunak, who had been rejected by Conservative Party members earlier in the year, was inserted by lawmakers in the desperate hope he could calm the crisis. Given that the party had just ousted two leaders in quick succession, it was unclear how long he would even stay in the post.One year later, he can take comfort that Britain is in a different place. It’s now possible, for a start, to have a conversation with visitors without being asked what on earth is going on. Projecting decency and stability, Mr. Sunak has calmed the markets, helped to repair relations with the European Union and sated his party’s appetite for regicide. The next election, due by January 2025, is on the horizon. Even party critics concede that Mr. Sunak will lead the Conservatives into it.But that’s where the good news stops for the prime minister. While Mr. Sunak has moved his party out of crisis mode, he is yet to win over voters. Against hopes that a new leader would raise the party’s fortunes, Mr. Sunak’s approval ratings have sunk along with esteem for the Conservatives. The polls repeatedly suggest a 20-point lead for the opposition Labour Party, whose leader, Keir Starmer, businesses and the media view as the prime minister in waiting.Adding to a sense of fatalism, a steady drip-feed of local elections — often set off by the bad behavior of Tory lawmakers — have cost the Conservatives once-safe seats. Two more, including one in Conservative hands since 1931, went over to the opposition last week. Mr. Sunak may be doing his best, in trying circumstances. But at the moment, it’s nowhere near enough.There’s an argument that any leader would struggle with the conditions Mr. Sunak inherited: high inflation, increased borrowing costs and low growth. Across the world, incumbent governments of all stripes are finding their time is up — whether it’s the center-left Labour Party in New Zealand or the right-wing populist Law and Justice party in Poland. When Mr. Sunak has found success, it’s been by making his own weather. His renegotiation of the Northern Ireland protocol, an especially vexed post-Brexit arrangement, showed maturity and won him a brief popularity bounce.Yet economic difficulties have been stubborn. Mr. Sunak, a former chancellor, was picked by lawmakers because of his economic credentials — and he has managed to win back some market confidence. But the government is still boxed in. The right of the party, including the outspoken Ms. Truss, wants tax cuts. Mr. Sunak won’t budge until inflation is down, which is not happening quickly enough. Facing a winter of high bills, Britons will be feeling the pinch for some time to come.But Mr. Sunak’s biggest challenge is the length of time his party has been in power. The Conservatives, plagued by scandal, have overseen a country where discontent is legion: A survey taken this summer found that three-quarters of people in Britain believe it is becoming a worse place to live. After 13 years of Tory rule — the same amount of time New Labour, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, enjoyed in office — the other side can’t be blamed for Britain’s woes.Mr. Sunak’s attempts to overcome this fundamental problem are twofold. First, he has accepted that the country is not working and needs to change. His five priorities — halving inflation, stopping the boats carrying migrants across the Channel, cutting National Health Service waiting lists, growing the economy and reducing debt — are designed to reflect key voter concerns. But many are pessimistic that all the goals can be achieved. Continuing health worker strikes, for example, signal that unhappiness with the state of the N.H.S. is unlikely to subside ahead of the election.His second move is more ambitious. In a bid to shake off the baggage of previous Tory governments, Mr. Sunak is trying to depict himself as the change candidate. He has axed David Cameron’s pet project, a high-speed rail network linking the Midlands and the North, and scaled down the net-zero commitments embraced by Boris Johnson and Theresa May. The goal is to show him as a man of action with his own convictions, someone prepared, as he recently put it, to “be bold.” But running against your party’s own record is tricky, and it is already causing resentment among colleagues who served in previous administrations.Hope, strangely, could come from the opposition. Mr. Starmer is yet to be embraced by the public — his job satisfaction ratings remain stubbornly low — and support for his party largely stems from anti-Tory feeling rather than enthusiasm for Labour itself. By depicting Mr. Starmer as a flip-flopping leader at the helm of an ineffectual party, the Tories aim to claw back support. Yet it’s telling that conversations with Conservative lawmakers — some of whom have already begun planning for life after politics — tend to focus more on what will happen after defeat than on how they might win.In Tory circles, a dinner party game is to debate who the next leader might be. The current favorite is Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary who has made a name for herself with attacks on identity politics. But the scale of defeat is key. A small one would see status quo candidates, like the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, or the defense secretary, Grant Shapps, emerge. A wipeout — winning fewer than 200 seats out of 650 — would give the edge to wild-card candidates from the party’s right. In that scenario Suella Braverman, the hard-line anti-immigrant home secretary, would come to the fore.For the Tories, such a contest — full of bloodletting and bombast — could be a disaster, setting the stage for years in the wilderness. To prevent it and to forestall defeat, Mr. Sunak must change the narrative. Politics is unpredictable, as Britain has amply shown in the past eight years. But right now, one thing’s for certain: The prime minister is running out of time.Katy Balls (@katyballs) is the political editor of The Spectator.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Another Setback for Rishi Sunak in a Local Election

      by

      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is trailing the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls.Britain’s governing Conservative Party, which is trailing badly in the opinion polls, lost one of its safest parliamentary seats on Friday in a significant new setback for the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who was also awaiting the result of another closely watched contest.Voting in the two Conservative strongholds of Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire took place on Thursday to replace two of the party’s lawmakers — one of whom quit after an allegation of sexual assault — and came as Britain’s health care system faces acute strain and its economy stagnates amid high inflation.The first result, announced early Friday, from Tamworth, is a stinging blow to Mr. Sunak, who, since he became prime minister last year following the brief and disastrous leadership of Liz Truss, has failed to close a persistent double-digit deficit in the opinion polls against the opposition Labour Party. The stakes are high because Mr. Sunak must call a general election within the next 15 months.In Tamworth, northeast of Birmingham, the vote was to replace Chris Pincher, the former Conservative lawmaker who had represented the district. He resigned from Parliament after a drunken incident in which, it was alleged, he had groped two men. In the 2019 general election, Mr. Pincher won with a majority of 19,634. On Friday that was overturned when Sarah Edwards for Labour won 11,719 votes, and the Conservative candidate, Andrew Cooper, won 10,403.“Tonight the people of Tamworth have voted for Labour’s positive vision and a fresh start,” Ms. Edwards told her cheering supporters after the result. “They have sent a clear message to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives that they have had enough of this failed government.”Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, described the vote as “a phenomenal result that shows Labour is back in the service of working people and redrawing the political map.”In a statement, he added: “To those who have given us their trust, and those considering doing so, Labour will spend every day acting in your interests and focused on your priorities. Labour will give Britain its future back.”A result was also expected early Friday from the vote in Mid Bedfordshire, around 50 miles north of London, to replace Nadine Dorries, a former cabinet minister and prominent supporter of Boris Johnson, who quit as prime minister last year.Analysts caution against over-interpreting the results of these types of local contests — known as by-elections — where there is no prospect of the result changing the government, and voters often cast their ballots to register a protest against the governing party. Less than 36 percent of registered voters turned out to vote in Tamworth; in Mid Bedfordshire the number was higher, at 44 percent.Because the Conservatives won so convincingly at the last general election, in 2019, Labour still has an electoral mountain to climb if it is to win a clear majority the next time Britons are asked to decide who should govern them.Yet, the scale of the switch of votes does not bode well for Mr. Sunak, suggesting that even some of his Conservative Party’s more secure strongholds are no longer impregnable.Mr. Sunak was praised for restoring some measure of stability after Ms. Truss’s economic plans roiled the financial markets and she became the country’s shortest lived prime minister in history. But he has struggled to win over the British public after 13 years of Conservative government.In recent weeks, Mr. Sunak has tried to seize the political initiative with a series of eye-catching decision: scaling back climate change targets, canceling the second phase of a high-speed rail project, announcing new measures to phase out the sale of cigarettes to young people and proposing a shake-up the high school examination system.Little electoral reward appears to have flowed from these announcements, however, three of which were made at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester earlier this month.That meeting was distracted by a high-profile appearance by Ms. Truss, and by scarcely concealed jockeying from those who see themselves as contenders for the party leadership, should the Conservatives lose the general election.By contrast, Labour’s conference in Liverpool, the week after, presented a more unified and confident image of a party that sees itself as close to power.Friday’s results are the latest in a succession of election setbacks for Mr. Sunak. In July Labour won a by-election in Selby and Ainsty, in the north of England, overturning a Conservative majority of more than 20,000.Earlier this month, Labour unseated the Scottish National Party from the Rutherglen and Hamilton West district, in a result that underscored a revival of the main opposition party’s fortunes in Scotland. Success there during the next general election could significantly improve Labour’s prospects of forming the next government. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      UK’s Labour Holds Party Conference After a Big Win

      by

      Just ask Britain’s opposition Labour party.Only a month ago, some Labour Party officials were fretting about the risks of fighting a parliamentary election in Scotland days before the party’s annual conference.What if the party underperformed, just before its leader, Keir Starmer, had to make one of the most important speeches of his career?In the end, the opposite happened.Labour exceeded its own expectations, trouncing the Scottish National Party in the district of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, outside Glasgow.It now seems the timing could not have been better. The victory not only promised to energize the gathering in Liverpool, but it also offered a road map for how Britain’s main opposition party could defeat the Conservatives and regain power after 13 years.“One thing is now clear,” Labour’s triumphant candidate, Michael Shanks, said to a cheering crowd on Friday. “There’s no part of this country where Labour can’t win. Labour can kick the Tories out of Downing Street next year and deliver the change that people want and this country so badly needs.”That is a message that Labour’s leaders will push relentlessly over the next three days, and it captures a paradox at the heart of British politics: Labour, the party of change, is seeking to lock in its current trajectory, while the Conservatives, the incumbents lagging in the polls, are desperate to shake up the political landscape.That dynamic helps explain why the Conservative leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, scrapped part of a costly high-speed rail project — one long supported by both parties — and is restyling himself as a disrupter. “Be in no doubt,” he told his party conference last week in Manchester, “it is time for a change, and we are it.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain on Wednesday at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. He has tried to position himself as a “change candidate,” even as his party has held power for 13 years.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Mr. Starmer, the goal is less far-fetched, if still challenging, according to analysts: He needs to give voters good reasons to vote for his party, rather than simply against the unpopular Conservatives.“Keir Starmer has done a lot of things faster than he expected,” said Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to a previous Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. “His task now is to make the sale to the public, which doesn’t really know him.”That will most likely involve Mr. Starmer reiterating the five missions that he set for the party in February, focused on economic growth, clean energy, the National Health Service, crime reduction and expansion of opportunity.A few of these missions sound not unlike the goals Mr. Sunak has set. And if Labour wins power, it will face the same funding squeeze that has shackled the Conservatives. But Mr. Starmer at least is not hobbled by his party’s record in government. Polls suggest that serial scandals under one of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Boris Johnson, and the misbegotten tax policies of another, Liz Truss, have lingered in voters’ minds.“People don’t like the Tories — they’re prepared to vote for Labour,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, who is attending the conference as a delegate. “But there is a sense that Labour has to give those voters something.”One thing Labour does not want to give them is the drama that spiced up the Conservative conference, with its attention-grabbing speeches by Ms. Truss and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, both of whom appeared to be vying for the future of the party even as Mr. Sunak tried to assert his control.At a pre-conference briefing for delegates, Mr. Fielding said, Labour officials warned them to avoid unguarded late-night conversations with journalists. “This is not a place to debate policy,” he said, paraphrasing the party’s message. “This is not a time for disagreement. This is a time for nailing the lead Labour has.”In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, Mr. Starmer ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though Mr. Starmer’s party is far ahead of the Conservatives.Hannah McKay/ReutersMr. Starmer will no doubt gladly discuss the by-election. Labour won back the seat from the Scottish National Party, which had held it since 2019, with a resounding 58.6 percent of the vote, an increase of 24.1 percentage points over its last election, while the S.N.P. scored 27.6 percent, a decline of 16.6 points.“You couldn’t have had better walk-up to the conference,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of public policy at the University of Glasgow. “The scale of the victory is more than they could have hoped for.”Professor McEwen cautioned that by-elections, with their low voter turnouts and strong anti-incumbent bias, do not automatically translate into similar gains in general elections. But she said the Labour Party had run an effective, disciplined campaign in Rutherglen — one it could rerun in districts across Scotland, where the S.N.P., like the Conservatives, is battling acute voter fatigue.Were Labour to replicate its success throughout Scotland, it could pick up 42 seats, according to John Curtice, a professor and pollster at the University of Strathclyde. (It currently has only two.) That would restore the party to a level of dominance that it has not had since 2014, when the S.N.P., riding a wave of support for Scottish independence, emerged as a dominant political force.Such a gain could help Labour amass a clear majority in Parliament, even if — as Professor Curtice said was likely — the party’s nearly 20-point advantage over the Tories tightens somewhat in the coming months.If the S.N.P. maintained its current number of seats, Labour would need to beat the Tories by 12 percentage points just to eke out a single-seat majority in Westminster, according to Professor Curtice. But for every 12 seats that Labour wins in Scotland, it could give up two percentage points to the Tories and still gain a majority.Labour still faces challenges, political analysts said. Mr. Starmer, a former public prosecutor, is not nearly as charismatic a figure as Mr. Blair was in 1997. In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, he ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though his party is far ahead of the Conservatives.As prime minister, Mr. Sunak retains an ability to set the agenda. After Mr. Sunak announced the suspension of the rail project, called High Speed 2, Mr. Starmer acknowledged that Labour would have to honor it. “I can’t stand here and commit to reversing that decision,” Mr. Starmer told the BBC. “They’ve taken a wrecking ball to it.”But on Friday, the Labour leader was not looking over his shoulder at the Tories. In a jubilant detour to Scotland, on his way to Liverpool, he sounded very much like a politician who could see a clear path to 10 Downing Street.“You blew the doors off,” Mr. Starmer told a victory rally. “Because we’ve changed, we are now the party of the change here in Scotland. We’re the party of change in Britain, the party of change right across the whole country.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Tony Blair, Former U.K. Leader, Is Suddenly Back in Favor

      by

      The former British prime minister, who left Downing Street widely unpopular, is back in favor with his party, Labour, which hopes his political skills can be an advantage as an election nears.A decade and a half after Tony Blair left Downing Street, one issue still defines the former British prime minister in the eyes of many Britons: his disastrous decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.When Mr. Blair was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II last year, more than a million people signed a petition demanding the honor be rescinded. And within his own Labour Party, he remained a complex figure, detested by those on the far left while grudgingly admired by some who noted that he was the party’s only leader to have won three consecutive British elections.Today, with the Labour opposition sensing rising power under the stewardship of its leader, Keir Starmer, Mr. Blair is suddenly, and rather remarkably, back in favor. For Mr. Starmer, embracing Mr. Blair sends a political message, underscoring Labour’s shift to the center. But the former prime minister also has charisma and communication skills that Mr. Starmer lacks, assets that could be useful as a general election approaches.Last month, the two men appeared onstage together, exchanging compliments at a glitzy conference organized by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — an organization that works for governments around the world, including autocratic ones, and churns out policies that could help Labour if it wins the next election.Mr. Blair, now 70, is graying, thinner and his face a little more gaunt than when he left Downing Street in 2007. But he still effortlessly held the stage as he told the audience that Britain would be in safe hands if Mr. Starmer won the next election.“It was like the apostolic succession was being declared,” said John McTernan, a political strategist and onetime aide to Mr. Blair, who added that “the chemistry between the two guys made you think they talk a lot and they understand each other.”Mr. Blair and Labour’s current leader, Keir Starmer, exchanged compliments onstage at a Tony Blair Institute conference.Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Getty ImagesJill Rutter, a former civil servant and a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, a London-based research institute, said Mr. Blair “has clearly been keen to reinsert himself as a big player in British politics,” but Mr. Starmer “is the first leader who seems prepared to let him do so.”The right-leaning Daily Telegraph newspaper was more blunt. “Tony Blair is preparing to rule Britain again — and Starmer might just let him,” read the headline of an opinion article.Mr. Blair led Labour into power in 1997 in a landslide victory and was prime minister for a decade, shifting the party to the center, helping to negotiate a peace deal in Northern Ireland and presiding over an economy strong enough to invest in health and education.But by the end of his tenure, and as Iraq descended into chaos, the public had soured on Mr. Blair, who, along with George W. Bush, the United States president, had justified the invasion with never-substantiated claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction. The invasion led to years of sectarian violence in Iraq and the rise of Islamist militant groups that became precursors to the Islamic State.Mr. Blair’s reputation post-Downing Street was further damaged by lucrative consultancy work for governments with dubious human rights records, seeming to confirm his affinity for wealth. Such questions have also been raised about his institute. London’s Sunday Times recently reported that the institute continued to advise the government of Saudi Arabia after the slaughter of the writer Jamal Khashoggi and still received money from the kingdom.The awarding of a knighthood to Mr. Blair last year prompted a street protest.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesIn a statement, the institute said, “Mr. Blair took the view then and is strongly of the view now — as he has said publicly — that whilst the murder of Mr. Khashoggi was a terrible crime that should never have happened, the program of social and economic change underway in Saudi Arabia is of immense and positive importance to the region and the world.”“The relationship with Saudi Arabia is of critical strategic importance to the West,” it added, and “therefore staying engaged there is justified.”None of these criticisms have stopped a rehabilitation that would have been inconceivable while Labour was led by Mr. Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger and a fierce political adversary of Mr. Blair’s. At the time, Mr. Starmer worked alongside Mr. Corbyn, and when Mr. Starmer became party leader in 2020, he initially kept Mr. Blair at arm’s length.Now, their ties are so warm that when the former prime minister recently celebrated his birthday at a London restaurant, Mr. Starmer dropped by to wish him well.“Tony has just kept going after a period in which it was almost like the Labour Party didn’t want him to be around,” said Alastair Campbell, Mr. Blair’s former spokesman. “I think people eventually think, ‘Say what you like about the guy, but he’s good at what he does; he’s still the most credible explainer of difficult situations.’”Some see a modern-day political parable in Mr. Blair’s return.“A lot of politics has now taken on the narrative of celebrity,” said Mr. McTernan, the political strategist, adding, “Tony, as a political celebrity, fell in the eyes of the public but he has earned his way back.”“It’s not about forgiveness about Iraq, but there is an arc of a narrative around Tony,” Mr. McTernan said, with Britons starting to “be ready to listen again.”Mr. Blair addressing British troops as prime minister in Basra, Iraq, in 2003.Pool photo by Stefan RousseauMr. Blair’s political rehabilitation has been helped by comparisons with a governing Conservative Party that has presided over political turmoil. Years of deadlock over Brexit were broken when Boris Johnson won a landslide election in 2019 — only to be driven out of Downing Street last year under a cloud of scandal. He was replaced by Liz Truss, the British prime minister with the shortest stint in history, before Rishi Sunak restored some stability.“We have had such a succession of failed prime ministers that, to look at someone who did command the stage, you do look back and say, ‘He was quite a big dominating prime minister,’” said Ms. Rutter.The institute’s output has also helped change Mr. Blair’s image, Mr. Campbell, his former spokesman, said. The former prime minister saw a gap for relatively nonideological research focusing on technocratic policymaking and tackling challenges such as artificial intelligence, digital policy and relations with the European Union.With about 800 staff members scattered around the world in Abu Dhabi, Accra, San Francisco, Singapore and New York, and a sleek, modern office in the West End of London, the institute has even had influence over the Conservative government, Ms. Rutter said, pointing to Mr. Blair’s proposal during the coronavirus pandemic to structure its vaccine program around giving as many people as possible a first shot.Mr. Campbell, his former spokesman, added that the work of the institute showed Mr. Blair in a new light, making money not just for himself but also “to build an organization, the fruits of which people are now seeing.”Perhaps the biggest question is: Now what?Mr. Blair, on the left of the second row, sat with other former prime ministers at the coronation of King Charles III this year.Pool photo by Richard Pohle“In the campaign, does an intervention from Tony help?” Mr. Campbell said of the coming election. “In my mind, it would; it would be big news. But that’s a tactical question.”If Labour wins power, more possibilities for influence would open up for Mr. Blair.Ms. Rutter suggests he has built up his institute in part because, when he was in Downing Street — which has relatively few staff members compared with government departments — he believed he had too few experts at his disposal.“The question is whether Blair is content to have an institute churning out reports that a Labour government may or may not want to look at, or will he be looking to be more of a power behind the throne,” she said.Mr. Blair, she added, “has tried to amass a huge piece of policy capability — the only problem for him now is that he’s not prime minister.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      British Conservatives’ Commitment to Green Policy Is Tested

      by

      British conservatives kept a seat in a recent election by opposing an ultralow emissions zone, and some are now questioning ambitious emissions-reduction targets.Britain, blanketed by cool, damp weather, has seemed like one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere not sweltering this summer. Yet a fierce political debate over how to curb climate change has suddenly erupted, fueled by economic hardship and a recent election surprise.The surprise came last week in a London suburb, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the Conservative Party held on to a vulnerable seat in Parliament in a by-election after a voter backlash against the expansion of a low-emission zone, which will penalize people who drive older, more polluting cars.The Conservatives successfully used the emission zone plan as a wedge issue to prevail in a district they were forecast to lose. It didn’t go unnoticed in the halls of Parliament, where even though lawmakers are in recess, they have managed to agitate over environmental policy for four days running.Britain’s Conservative government is now calling into question its commitment to an array of ambitious emissions-reduction targets. Tory critics say these goals would impose an unfair burden on Britons who are suffering because of a cost-of-living crisis. Uxbridge, they argued, shows there is a political price for forging ahead.With a general election looming next year, the Tories also see an opportunity to wield climate policy as a club against the opposition Labour Party, which once planned to pour 28 billion pounds, or about $36 billion, a year into green jobs and industries but scaled back its own ambitions amid the economic squeeze.On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would approach environmental policies in a “proportionate and pragmatic a way that doesn’t unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives.”It was a strikingly circumspect statement given Britain’s self-proclaimed leadership in climate policy, which goes back to Margaret Thatcher and includes hosting the annual United Nations climate conference in 2021. And it clearly reflected the new political thinking in the aftermath of the Uxbridge vote.Government officials insist Mr. Sunak is not giving up on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030. Britain remains committed to a benchmark goal of being a net-zero — or carbon neutral — economy by 2050, which is enshrined in law. But on Tuesday, a senior minister, Michael Gove, said he wanted to review a project to end the installation of new gas boilers in homes.Traffic at the edge of the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone this month.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockEven before Mr. Sunak’s comments, critics contended that Britain’s historically strong record on climate policy had been waning.The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, recently said Britain “has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action.” The group cited the government’s failure to use the spike in fuel prices to reduce energy demand and bolster renewables. It also noted Britain’s consent for a new coal mine, and its support for new oil and gas production in the North Sea.Last month, Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio, blaming “apathy” over the environment for his departure, though he was also a close ally of the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. In a letter to Mr. Sunak, Mr. Goldsmith wrote, “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested.”Climate experts said Britain’s economic troubles fractured what had been a broad political consensus on the need for aggressive action. The schism isn’t just between the two main parties: Even within the Conservative and Labour parties, there are fissures between those who continue to call for far-reaching goals and those who want to scale back those ambitions.“This used to be an issue of across-party consensus; now it is not,” said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, an environmental research group. “The Tories have gone out of their way to turn it into a wedge issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”In Uxbridge, however, the strategy worked. The district, with its leafy streets and suburban homes, has one of the capital’s highest ratios of car dependency. That made plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand an ultra-low-emissions zone to encompass the district a potent issue for Conservatives, who opposed widening the zone.While the plan aims to improve London’s poor air quality, rather than reach net-zero targets, it was vulnerable to accusations that was piling on costs to consumers — in this case drivers of older, more polluting, vehicles.“It’s a really big impact at a time when people are concerned more generally about the cost of living,” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in neighboring district of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. “In the short term, a lot of people who don’t have the money to buy an electric vehicle or a compliant vehicle are caught by this.”Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThe surprise Conservative victory also sent alarm bells ringing within Labour. It caused tension between Mr. Khan, who insists the expansion will go ahead, and the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who seemed to want a delay.“We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” Mr. Starmer said after the defeat. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”Even before the by-election, Labour had backtracked on its plan to invest billions a year on green industries. It blamed rising borrowing costs, which spiked during the ill-fated premiership last year of Liz Truss. Now, instead of rolling out spending in the first year of a Labour government, the party said it would phase it in.Labour’s fear was that voters would conclude the incoming government would have to raise taxes, which would give the Tories another opening. “Economic stability, financial stability, always has to come first, and it will do with Labour,” Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, told the BBC.Such language is worlds away from a year ago, when Ed Miliband, who speaks for Labour on climate issues, told Climate Forward, a New York Times conference in London, that “the imprudent, reckless thing to do is not to make the investment.”He did, however, also argue that consumers should not carry all the burden of the transition. “The government has to collectivize some of those costs to make this transition fair,” said Mr. Miliband, a former party leader.Climate activists said Labour had made a mistake by highlighting the costs of its plan at a time of tight public finances. But given the broad public support for climate action, particularly among the young, some argue that a debate over which climate policies are the best need not end in failure for Labour.“Voters want something done,” Mr. Burke said. “They don’t want to pay the price for it but equally, they don’t want the government to say they are not doing anything about climate change.”Protesters rally against the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, this month in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockFor all the new skepticism, climate policy is also deeply embedded in the Conservative Party. Mrs. Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to talk about the threat to the planet from greenhouse gases in 1989. A former prime minister, Theresa May, passed the net-zero pledge in 2019, and Mr. Johnson, as mayor of London, conceived the low-emission zone that boomeranged against Labour in Uxbridge, which Mr. Johnson had represented in Parliament, last week.Alice Bell, the head of climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, noted that some Tory lawmakers were rebelling against Mr. Sunak because they were worried about losing their seats by appearing to be against firm action on climate change.Extreme weather, she said, would continue to drive public opinion on climate change. While Britain’s summer has been cool, thousands of Britons have been vacationing in the scorching heat of Italy and Spain, to say nothing of those evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in the face of deadly wildfires.“I’m wondering if we’re going to have some people coming back from holiday as climate activists,” Ms. Bell said. More