Liz Truss was the UK’s shortest-serving Prime Minister. Just over one year ago in the wake of her disastrous mini-Budget and seeing the state of the polls, the Conservative Party ousted her from office.

Source: politico.eu

Sunak was then parachuted-in to take charge, promising, “integrity, professionalism and accountability.”

The far-right media breathed a sigh of relief: “But now, suddenly, there is a spring to that Tory step. Sullen head shakes have been replaced by smiles and cheers. Back-biting is starting to turn into unity. The grown-ups are back in the room. If Rishi Sunak can achieve all that in the space of three days, goodness knows what he might do in two years.”

The message was clear: Truss was an aberration – Sunak marked a return to normal service: professional, competent leadership in the national interest.

And at first, the UK population seemed to believe some of that, too – Sunak saw an immediate “at least he’s not Truss” boost on taking office, followed by a steady climb in the polls from December 2022 to April 2023.

We are now in September – the anniversary of Truss’s Budget and she has risen from her political grave to assure us that she was right all along. She appears to have learned nothing from her experience and even claimed that the evidence of recent decades is that slashing taxes, regulation and state spending is the certain road to shared prosperity. On that basis, she recommends doubling down on those ideas – the only reason they failed, she believes, is that they have not been pushed hard enough.

For the rest of us, it is increasingly clear that 13 years of increasingly extreme right-wing policies have produced a country which none of us ever wished or expected to see: we have a weak economy and the worst fall in living standards since records began; our NHS is struggling while our schools are in danger of literal collapse; and our rivers are flowing with sewage while the government steps back from all its environmental pledges.

But enough of Truss, what about Sunak: how different is he?

He is far less different than he would like us to believe:

• He is less obviously deranged – it is hard for anyone with an understanding of business, finance, or economics (or of course climate science) to take Truss seriously and that is less true of Sunak; but
• He comes from the same ideological stable – he too is a Tufton Street graduate, indeed all the candidates for leadership have been Tufton Street graduates, and he shares her market fundamentalist beliefs;
• He is therefore not willing to solve any of the UK’s problems.

The first point is subjective, but the polls suggest it may be true.

The second and third deserve a little elaboration.

He comes from the same ideological stable

In fact, all the candidates in the most recent Conservative Leadership contest shared a common past: they had all been groomed by the opaquely funded, far-right ‘think tanks’ in Tufton Street.

For those who are not familiar with Tufton Street, its existence and even more so its influence comes as a bit of a shock: spread across two London townhouses, 55 and 57 Tufton Street and a couple of other locations, are a frighteningly powerful and tightly-connected network of campaigning groups and far-right ‘think tanks,’ or perhaps more accurately, propaganda outlets:

• The Adam Smith Institute;
• Brexit Central;
• The Centre for Policy Studies;
• Civitas;
• The Global Warming Policy Foundation;
• The Institute for Economic Affairs;
• Leave Means Leave;
• The New Culture Forum;
• The Taxpayers’ Alliance; and
• Vote Leave.

Not only do they in many instances share a physical location, but several of them were founded by the same person. Matthew Elliott is the founder of The Taxpayers’ Alliance and Brexit Central as well as of Business for Britain (the forerunner of Vote Leave), Vote Leave itself (which he co-founded with Dominic Cummings), Big Brother Watch and Conservative Friends of Russia.

Truss was the founder of the Free Enterprise Group, an off-shoot of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). When her mini-Budget came out, it was welcomed as “refreshing” by the IEA and the following exchange took place on Twitter.

To which, Matthew Lesh of the IEA replied, “Yes.”

Sunak has been closely connected with the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) for whom he wrote a report proposing an extension of the idea of freeports.

Freeports themselves are not (despite what the CPS says) banned by the EU – indeed the UK has had freeports in the past: the last five were closed in 2012 under Cameron’s government. What is illegal under EU legislation is anything resembling charter cities because of the human rights issues associated with enabling the guarantor to establish his or her own sovereign Plunderstate-within-a-state:

“This arrangement would not merely construct a separate economic framework for the designated territory, but also establish a legal and political system autonomous from the host state.”

And incredibly, all the other candidates had equally strong links. What this means in practice is that, though they have different styles, they all share the market fundamentalist agenda.

There are no grown-ups around the cabinet table.

He is therefore not willing to solve any of the UK’s problems

If you are a market fundamentalist, you believe that markets are the best way to allocate resources.

This innocuous-sounding phrase has enormous significance if you take it literally and as an article of faith. It means that everything – food, healthcare, education, housing, money, even political power – should be allocated by markets and only by markets. If you want food, you should buy it. If you haven’t got the money, that is because you have not been adding enough value – your market value is too low – and it is down to you to become more valuable, not down to other ‘more productive’ members of society to subsidise you. If you want healthcare, you should buy it. And if you want a say in how your country is run, that too should not come free: donors get what they deserve, and so do non-donors.

It follows that governments should do as little as possible. Even in the face of the UK’s mounting problems, Sunak has repeatedly said that government cannot be expected to solve every problem; Javid said that responsibility for health should start at home, not rest with the state; Therese Coffey says that the government is not responsible for keeping the rivers clean; and Gillian Keegan explains that the Department for Education is not responsible for whether or not schools fall down. They are united in one thing only: they do not want to take responsibility for solving any of our problems.

Specifically with respect to the environment, the Tufton Street view is that governments should not interfere with the magic of the markets. And so, despite the pledges, despite the widespread evidence of climate disasters around the world, Sunak decided to walk away from his government’s pledge to halt sale of fossil-fuelled cars by 2030. This was, predictably, celebrated by the IEA and the CPS.

For similar reasons, Sunak will not act to address the mass impoverishment of the British population, the severe drop in living standards caused by the cost-of-living crisis, the urgent need to properly fund our NHS or to fix any of the other structural failings that have built up over the last 13 years. To answer the question posed in the title of this article: Sunak shirks as well as Truss, perhaps better.

Conclusion

As we wrote last week, 13 years of this market fundamentalism has brought the UK to a state of national emergency.

But of course we have a chance coming to make a change in direction, and we can put the UK back onto a path of sanity.

We can start working towards a just, prosperous, democratic society in which everybody has the chance of a decent life. A society with secure, fairly-paid jobs so that ordinary people have a reasonable expectation of being able to afford to buy themselves a flat or house. A society where normal people can count on being able to bring up children without fear of poverty. A society where access to healthcare is a right not a luxury. A society where the government accepts that it has responsibilities for the population as a whole and that collective action is often the only way to solve important problems (for example tackling the climate emergency or funding basic research with no immediate commercial application).

A society, above all, where each new generation has a reasonable expectation of a better life than its predecessors.

If you would like to make the UK such a country – as, remember, it used to be – then please:

• Make sure you will be allowed to vote at the next election;
• Use your vote tactically;
• Do whatever you can to raise awareness of these issues – for example by sharing this article using the buttons below.

If you are a politician from any party who would like to see a return to sanity, please reach out.

And if you think you might like to help more, take a look at The 99% Organisation and join us.