The Tories could well win the next election

Could a modified version of Truss/Kwarteng have worked, or were Sunak/Hunt right to change course? I suspect that the debate will continue for years to come, with neither side achieving a decisive victory. 

There might be a compromise. If Truss/Kwarteng had done more to roll the pitch and also been less radical in their goals, and if they had not fallen out with the Bank of England, they might still be in office. Equally, the Bank should have put up interest rates earlier, and all the way to three per cent. It was also unnecessary to announce the sale of gilts at a jittery moment. The markets were spooked enough without an apparent threat to longer-term interest rates causing further alarm.

Able men and women with distinguished credentials are on opposite sides. Those of us watching uncertainly from the touchline could be forgiven for coming to one conclusion. Despite the scientific pretensions of many economists, their subject is one of the less exact branches of astrology.

All that said, wise Tory politicians will try to avoid engaging with endless disputes over detail. We have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor. They have a strategy. To attempt to change any of that between now and the general election would be suicidal. If the Tory party is to have any chance of recovering, it must play the hand which events have dealt it.

This does not mean that it should leave history entirely to the historians. One latest poll provided Tories with a surprisingly encouraging piece of news. When it came to economic management, Rishi Sunak had a six-point lead over Keir Starmer (narrower than is justified, but at least something). The electoral danger does not lie in short-term poll fluctuations. The real risk is that the party will forfeit its reputation for economic competence, as happened after 1992 and the ERM degringolade. That was an unfair verdict from the public. It was also an understandable one. Although John Major’s government had a good story to tell, he was never able to command an audience because his party was hopelessly split. So he lost the battle for history.

This time, party management will be easier. As always, there are Tory malcontents, yet nothing on the scale of post-1992. There is, of course, a fellow called Boris Johnson. Anyone who believes that Boris would ever wish success on a government led by Rishi Sunak with Michael Gove as one of his principal lieutenants belongs in one of the big department stores, joining the queue to see Santa Claus. Unless there is something in it for him, Bojo has no interest in the welfare of his party, or of his country. But at least, as Michael Gove discovered in 2016, he is too idle to be a serious plotter.

As far as the new government is concerned, party interest and national welfare coincide. Both would be assisted by a clear narrative, along the following lines…

“In 2015, the economy was in good shape after some difficult years. Earlier in the decade, a world economic crisis had meant hard times for Britain. More enjoyable goals had to be postponed and priority given to reducing the Budget deficit. Ministers had not hesitated to take the right decisions, as many voters recognised.

“As a result, we were in a position to look forward to tax cuts, judicious spending increases and a reduced public borrowing requirement. Then came two successive five-letter words: Covid and Putin. These were the biggest challenges which Britain has ever faced in peacetime. From the outset, the Tory government was determined to confront them and we still are. 

“Neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor went into politics because they wanted to raise taxes. Both of them are committed to doing everything possible to stimulate economic growth. But we have to bring inflation under control and cope with the immense costs which the crises have imposed.”

Those points need to be made and repeated. It should help that the PM and his Chancellor both have natural authority. These are serious men for serious times. The Labour front bench seems reluctant to challenge the government’s basic diagnosis. Their response is a straightforward one: “We can do better than that lot.” It is hardly a hopeless tactic, but with the passage of time, as the public grow accustomed to the Sunak regime but remain fascinated by the man, it may be increasingly hard to bang on about the same old Tories.

There is, as always, a further factor: luck. A mild winter would help, as would lower inflation in the US. Then there is Ukraine: dangerous, unpredictable, but not hopeless. It may be that favourable developments will relieve the pressure on energy prices. To put it mildly, all this refers to events well outside Britain’s control and luck is a fickle jade. Yet it may also be that there is an analogy between Sunak/Hunt and Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes believed that although mankind was the greatest threat to its own well-being,

it was possible to create structures which would constrain evil. He also nourished the private hope that given peace guaranteed by Leviathan, men would turn out to be better than he feared, so that full Hobbesian rigour could be relaxed. Today, the economic prospects may be a little better than the government has acknowledged.

There will be two more March budgets before the next election. That could provide opportunities for cautious excursions into good news, with the Chancellor complimenting the public on its realistic and indeed stoical response to economic problems – and beginning to offer rewards. It might at least be possible to view the sunlit uplands through binoculars. Politically, there should also be reinforcements. Michael Gove is adept at delivering good news while Nadhim Zahawi has the makings of a first-class Party Chairman and Minister for the Today Programme. It is also vital that Suella Braverman should succeed.

There are others, but the PM has also made an odd misjudgment. Although Kemi Badenoch will no doubt do sterling work in promoting foreign trade, she will be spending her time in airport lounges on the way to distant capitals, when she is needed on the home front.

If you had written a film script faithfully recounting the events of the past few months, you would have been told to take it away and add some semblance of verisimilitude.

Anyone who did read it would also have made the obvious point. Any party which went through such turmoil would have been electorally doomed. But that is not necessarily so. It might be that the Tory party has renounced self-harm, just in time.