Conked Out Conservatives

Things are not looking good for the Conservatives. Every day it appears, they give  themselves a lower chance of pulling through at next year’s general election. When Rishi Sunak was elected leader of the Conservative Party back in 2022, he had five key priorities on his mind: to halve inflation; grow the economy; reduce national debt; cut NHS waiting lists, and to stop the boats. Let’s look at where we are a few months on.

During her conference speech on Tuesday, Suella Braverman warned that global migration is ‘a hurricane’ which threatens to hit Britain with ‘millions’ of new arrivals. She also claimed politicians were ‘too squeamish about being smeared as racists’ to deal with the matter. Clearly, a leftist ideology has captured the minds of even those who claim to be conservative. Further, on November 23, we expect an announcement that net immigration over two years will hit one million. It seems that the government has opened the gates to a population the size of Glasgow. No doubt this number will rise. Why is a nominally conservative government continuing to allow this – is it mere incompetence, or something more sinister?

Some specific aspects of NHS waiting lists, such as patients waiting more than 18 months for treatment, have fallen; however, the overall number of people waiting for a consultant-led treatment is at an all-time high. The latest figures at the time of Rishi’s tweet about cutting the NHS waiting lists, showed that the number of patients waiting for NHS consultant-led treatment in England reached a record high of 7.33 million at the end of March 2023. New figures published after he made his claim now show that the list had grown further to reach 7.42 million at the end of April. Again, a step in the wrong direction.

Then, there’s the £100 billion black hole, HS2 – the nation’s most expensive vanity project. Asked just days before what he intended to do, Sunak dodged the question. Perhaps fearing he had nothing to declare at conference, Sunak then announced  that he will scrap the Manchester leg of HS2, alongside news that A-levels are to be replaced. Maybe Sunak thought that these announcements would garner praise or at least generate a distraction, but quite frankly he has bigger fish to fry. 

Taxes are at their highest rate for 70 years according to the OBR data, with the share of GDP extracted in UK tax projected to rise from 33.8% to 34.2% in 2021-22.  But it’s not just that: businesses continue struggling to recover from the effects of lockdown, weighed down by a defiant corporation tax of 25 per cent. At least former Prime Minister Liz Truss displayed some common sense, calling for corporation tax to be put back to 19%. But, that is unlikely to happen.

Given that a Conservative candidate narrowly held off Labour at Uxbridge and South Ruislip in July (and that was mostly down to Sadiq Khan’s absurd ULEZ plans), is it any wonder the Tory conference room was described as a ‘ghost town’? The Labour Party are unlikely to view the Tory conference as anything other than a huge confidence boost, and let’s face it: as the situation currently stands, even a Labour government would have to go some to make matters worse for the nation.

Jack Watson has a Substack newsletter called Ten Foot Tigers about being a Hull City fan. You can subscribe here.

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