Rishi Sunak said the UK faces “profound economic challenge”, and all eyes will be on how he moves to address this.
Three men have held Sunak’s former position of Chancellor in the short time since he left office. Jeremy Hunt is expected to remain in the post and deliver a fiscal statement on Monday, having already ripped up £32 billion of the £45 billion tax cuts announced a month ago under the short-lived Liz Truss regime.
Ben Ramanauskas, a research economist at Oxford University writing for the Standard, says it’s right to restore the health of public finances but the government “should not do so at the expense of the most vulnerable and should still go for economic growth.”
Sunak is still blamed by some within the Conservative party for triggering the downfall of Boris Johnson when he and Sajid Javid dramatically resigned. Mere months later, Liz Truss’s position became untenable amid equally stunning scenes. Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has made repeated calls for a general election to end the “chaos” of the Tory government – an issue Sunak knows must be met head on.
“We now need stability and unity and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together,” Sunak said today.
There is much for the new Prime Minister and his team to deal with: an NHS grappling with a record backlog in care, post-Brexit Britain and the stand off with Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol, the contentious policy of sending illegal migrants to Rwanda, the war in Ukraine and the UK’s spend on defence.
Tackling that daunting list with sound money principles will be a battle Rishi Sunak may not ultimately get to take credit for winning, warns Stephen King writing for the Standard. The “painful initial side effects” of austerity and recession are unlikely to see recovery by the next general election, and the long-term benefits may only be seen by the next PM in No10, he writes.
What should be top of Rishi Sunak’s in-tray? Let us know in the comments below or on our Instagram for the chance to be featured on the ES website.
