A bold reassertion of Conservative values

A year ago Rishi Sunak did not attend the Conservative Party conference. After losing the leadership contest to succeed Boris Johnson, he stayed away to give Liz Truss “some room” to ease herself into the job of prime minister. She was then prised out of it by Tory MPs, after the economic meltdown that followed the mini-Budget, and they turned to Mr Sunak, who had been warning of the baleful consequences of unfunded tax cuts.

Since entering No 10, the Prime Minister has set out to reassert the basic Conservative virtues of competence and pragmatism. The ship of state has been steadied, and the markets are no longer in a lather over the Government’s commitment to sound money and sensible financial management.

But Mr Sunak is aware that this is not enough. He needs to project more to the country than the acumen of a clever accountant or high-flying official. We needed to know what he stands for, where his values lie and where he envisages taking the country.

In his speech in Manchester, he promised “to fundamentally change our country,” and vowed: “I will lead in a different way.” The word “change” featured 30 times, which is a high-risk strategy that Labour can be expected to make much of at their conference next week.

His biggest announcement – one that dogged him throughout the conference – was the axing of the HS2 link from Birmingham to Manchester. Mr Sunak sought to regain the initiative by promising that all the money saved would be used to upgrade transport links across the North. Although critics said the decision contradicted the party’s commitment to “long-term” decision-making, Mr Sunak said there was nothing long-term about wasting even more money. He blamed mismanagement for the mind-boggling increase in costs and said the connection to Euston station in London, which will go ahead after all, will be given to a stand-alone executive body.

The Government is braced for compensation claims from people on the route of the abandoned link whose properties have been blighted for more than 10 years. Questions have also been raised about the capacity of the construction industry to deliver such an ambitious road and rail programme across the North.

But Mr Sunak said he was making the right decisions, not the easy ones – though when it came to the NHS there was no change: it would remain free at the point of use.

Unless productivity is increased significantly, the 75-year-old fundamentals will stay as they are, sucking in vast amounts of public money with no discernible improvement in care.

Mr Sunak hopes to ease pressure on the NHS by reducing smoking through a progressive increase in the legal age, with the aim of eradicating the habit within a generation. This risks being seen as an un-Conservative move that will need to be approved by Parliament – and almost certainly will be, since other parties are instinctively in favour of banning things. Mr Sunak said it was justified by the health benefits, but this must not be used as an argument to extend bans to food and alcohol.

The hour-long speech was confidently delivered and was packed with announcements that touched on almost every aspect of public policy, from school exams – with a new Advanced British Standard to replace A-levels – to a “war on woke”. As a sign of the times, the biggest cheer came for a statement that a few years ago no one would have felt it necessary to say: “A man is a man and a woman is a woman. It’s common sense.”

Under the proposed education reforms, all pupils will study some form of English and maths until age 18, with teachers expected to provide additional hours to help their students meet the new qualification.

Mr Sunak was also unafraid to talk about the importance of family, and his wife, Akshata Murty, made a surprise appearance ahead of the speech to praise her husband, his values and strength of purpose.

This very personal, almost presidential, speech was a confident attempt to assert his own style of governing in the expectation that voters will give him a chance even if they have tired of the Conservatives after 13 years in power.
His story of how the son of immigrants made it to No 10 was arguably the most powerful section of the speech, even moving one Cabinet colleague to tears. His background demonstrated how Conservatives offer opportunities that Labour has never emulated.

The conference this year has been far less febrile than last, encouraging Tories to believe that they can still turn around their political fortunes. They point to the narrowing of the polls since Mr Sunak dropped some of the unrealistic timetables for reaching net zero and declared himself the motorists’ friend.

His peroration was less an agenda for wholesale change than a strong reassertion of traditional Tory values. The task ahead is to persuade the country that the two can coincide.

Manchester 2023 marked the moment where Mr Sunak dropped the caution and came out fighting as a bold and radical leader.