“Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future.”
Conservative Slogan on Sunak’s Podium
“The timescale of a century is an instant in cosmic time, but for politicians it’s an eternity”
Lord Martin Rees
Many BBC television viewers in the United Kingdom will have been watching Laura Kuenssberg's ‘State of Chaos’ on Monday evenings, in which she charts the turbulent course of UK politics over the past seven years. On Monday 18 September she highlighted the impact of Dominic Cummings on the civil service, which began with his insistence that No. 10 should take control of the team at HM Treasury. This led directly to the resignation of Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the promotion of Rishi Sunak into that role from Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
We’re now seeing the legacy of that combined governance following the departure of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings. Rishi Sunak’s strong financial background, both in Government and in commercial life before his election to Parliament in 2015, has effectively transferred HM Treasury into No. 10, and what Cummings planned to be ‘No. 10 controlling HM Treasury’ has actually become the complete reverse. As a result, it's beginning to look distinctly as if the sense of strategic direction which is so essential to the Prime Minister’s office is being lost as the financial mandarins take over.
Just in the past week we've seen a watering-down of the key Government commitment to addressing climate change, together with what Boris has described as the ‘mutilation of HS2’ as the Government steps back from its commitment to the route north of Birmingham: thereby leaving it even more of a white elephant than most of us viewed it when first proposed. Meanwhile the cutbacks in defence spending have not only resulted in the departure of former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace but also the strange sight of a brand-new aircraft carrier with just eight aircraft on board.
Is it really sensible for financiers to run everything?
My working career started in 1971, just after the collapse of aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. The blame was laid firmly at the door of allowing engineers to take over the top jobs: they knew how to build engines, but they couldn't cope with the major swings in exchange rates at that time.
Rishi Sunak's experience has been almost wholly financial, both before and during his roles in Government; it's not surprising, therefore, that strategic direction has taken a back seat since he became Prime Minister. Looking at his ‘Five Pledges’, it's certainly possible to see matters of immediate concern for the general public — stopping illegal immigration and cutting the NHS waiting lists — but the others (halving inflation, growing the economy and reducing debt) are HM Treasury, not prime ministerial, ambitions.
We all know the old adage, ‘It's the economy, stupid’, but where are the commitments to the major long-term issues which need addressing: stopping climate change, bringing peace to a troubled world, and starting to tackle the increasingly desperate polarisation of wealth throughout both the United Kingdom and the free world? They're not in evidence as priorities: even the latter economic issue is being by-passed, if The Sunday Times headline article 'Sunak revives plans to slash inheritance tax' is anything to go by (see our commentary on 5 June).
Looked at from HM Treasury's perspective, however, Sunak’s decisions are no doubt making eminent sense for the short term — and that's not surprising, because he is a Treasury man at heart. And it all tracks back to Dominic Cummings trying to do precisely the reverse — that's the irony with which we are confronted.
Would the Labour Party do better if they succeed in next year's General Election? It remains to be seen, but there is at present quite a bit of evidence of their strategic vacillation.
As we commented on 9 May, long-term governance is a rarity in British politics.
It’s therefore interesting to see how King Charles appears to be stepping forward to fill this vacuum. His recent visit to Paris was not just pomp and circumstance, although there was quite a lot of that. He also had plenty to say on strategic direction — on peace and on climate change: ‘We once again face unprovoked aggression on our continent… the importance of standing in resolute solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Just as we stand together against military aggression, so must we strive together to protect the world from our most existential challenge of all — that of global warming, climate change and the catastrophic destruction of nature’.
He spent several hours in discussion with President Macron, and I'm quite sure that was not just on pleasantries. After seventy years of the monarchy restricting its political input to those very private weekly audiences with the Prime Minister, it looks as if King Charles is stepping forward to make a more visible contribution. Providing that he restricts his views to non-party political issues and retains a focus on the long term, that may make a lot of sense.
You have to go back to the first terms of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair to see governance by statesmen rather than by mere politicians, and maintaining long-term strategic direction has suffered as a result (although there is continuing evidence of Gordon Brown's interest in long-term issues).
On Saturday afternoon, I attended a lecture given by Lord Martin Rees in Cambridge: listeners may recall that we reported on his recent book, ‘If Science is to Save Us’, on 3 October 2022. He observed that this century in which we live is the first one in the 45 million centuries that have spanned the life of our Earth in which the future is in our own hands. After remarking that politicians only act for the long term if the public is onside, he remarked that while the timescale of a century is a mere instant in cosmic time, for politicians it's an eternity.
We therefore clearly need to get the public onside with these long-term concerns: as Martin says, there is no planet B for humanity. If we want our descendants to enjoy anywhere near the quality of life that we have, we must take these warnings seriously; and that includes young people. The Children’s Society survey has just reported that even for 10-17 year olds worries about the environment take second place to those about the cost of living.
Dominic Cummings probably thought that he was providing strategic direction in his strange and chaotic attempt to shake up British politics, but the damage he has caused was not restricted to the Johnson era — it continues with us today. Financial market-orientated people are good at dealing with short-term issues, but we need strategists to plan for the future and to make the case for general public support.
Who will accompany King Charles in this quest?
Gavin Oldham OBE
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