How Sunak can make the most of his last months as Prime Minister
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Prime Minister waiting for something to turn up will wait until the last moment to call a General Election.
Most pundits expect Rishi Sunak to go to polls in autumn of this year but surely those same pundits would not be surprised if he waited until the latest possible moment – 28 January 2025. This would have the double benefit for Sunak of giving the economy time to recover further (hopefully) and having 2022-25 in brackets after his name in lists of Prime Ministers forever after. If he can hold on until next year, he would join recent Prime Ministers Gordon Brown (2007-10), Theresa May (2016-19) and Boris Johnson (2019-22) as well as luckless predecessors, Spencer Percival (1809-12) and Neville Chamberlain (1937-40), in the three-year club.
So we’re stuck with Sunak for the best part of this year at least, especially as the right of the Tory party is off to the pub or defecting to Labour. To be fair to Sunak, he has shown that, for all his faults, he has plenty of admirable qualities: he is dutiful, diligent, hard-working and intelligent and we should hope that, now he is finally secure in his post, he will use those qualities to lay down a legacy of which he can be proud. Sunak’s recent attempts to ban smoking have shown that he is keen to make a permanent mark so, with this in mind, here are a few things that he could focus on through the rest of this year that could make a real difference in the energy sector.
First, for all my scepticism about nuclear power and in the spirit of Magnus Magnusson (we’ve started so we might as well finish), Sunak could start by trying to cut the Gordian Knot at Hinckley Point C. This should be the sort of project that Sunak would love. Lots of data, lots of spreadsheets, lots of dumb decision-making and cost-boosting alterations ordered by the government along the way. EDF thinks the plant will be operational by 2029 but this might drift to 2031. Sunak could make sure it’s the former.
Second, battery storage technology is going to be the missing link between renewables and the problems of intermittency (and, by the way, it’s this that Elon Musk will be remembered for, not Mars or his destruction of Twitter). The Department of Energy Security & Net Zero has done plenty of work on this but it would be a very good use of Sunak’s time to make sure they are being as imaginative and as forward-thinking as they can be. Do their plans take into account the very latest energy storage technology which is changing and improving week by week?
Third, Sunak could get into the unglamorous world of transmission (and a Starmer government would, alas for Sunak, be all too grateful for this) and accelerate the process of getting the UK’s transmission networks ready for Net Zero by 2035. The Electricity System Operator (ESO) and National Grid are doing plenty here but in November last year, the government replied to the Electricity Networks Commissioner’s report on accelerating electricity transmission network with 87 pages of comprehensive responses. It’s hard to think of a better place for our detail-oriented Prime Minister to throw his weight around and find out how much progress the energy department and its lightweight Secretary of State is making in this vital area. After all, you can generate all the electricity you want but if it can’t be transmitted then it’s useless.
Fourth, we have increased gas storage in the UK since Russia invaded Ukraine to around 12 days, mostly through Centrica’s storage facility in the North Sea. However, we still aren’t taking our national energy security seriously enough. While our need for gas storage is less vital than other European countries given our ample domestic gas resources, that 12-day gas storage capacity dips to 7.5 days in winter. Could Sunak persuade the energy industry to take this to, say, 25 days? This is an achievement that he would be thanked for in the future.
This time next year, Rishi Sunak will most likely still be the MP for Richmond but he’ll have time once again to turn out for his local cricket team in North Yorkshire as he did while on the backbenches during the fleeting Truss administration. As all cricketers know, those long overs when fielding and trying to catch your captain’s eye can sometimes feel very long indeed and Sunak would hardly be human if his mind didn’t drift over what he did and didn’t achieve in office. If he wants those memories to be happy ones, there’s much he can do in the next six months.
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