His perky and nerdy demeanour covers an overlooked fact: he is comfortably Britain’s most right-wing Conservative prime minister since Margaret Thatcher
Mr Sunak’s perky and nerdy demeanour covers an overlooked fact: he is comfortably the most right-wing Conservative prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. Taking a hard position on asylum-seekers is just the beginning. On everything from social issues, devolution and the environment to Brexit and the economy, Mr Sunak is to the right of the recent Tory occupants of 10 Downing Street. Yet neither voters nor his colleagues seem to have noticed.
Where recent Conservative prime ministers dragged the party towards liberalism, Mr Sunak is resolutely traditionalist. David Cameron, prime minister from 2010 until 2016, backed gay marriage against the wishes of a majority of his”, so people could change gender without a medical or lengthy bureaucratic process. Those days are gone. When the Scottish National Party introduced similar rules, Mr Sunak’s government blocked them, upsetting 25 years of constitutional norms.
Critics within the party moan that Mr Sunak is a closet leftie: a man who was too quick to spend money when he was chancellor during the pandemic and is too slow to cut taxes now that he is prime minister. Such largesse was out of necessity, rather than choice. By instinct, Mr Sunak is the most fiscally conservative leader since Mr Cameron. Mrs May was comfortable with a larger state as was Boris Johnson, Mr Sunak’s predecessor from 2019 to 2022. By contrast, Mr Sunak winces at the idea.
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