Five months ago, Rishi Sunak announced his five pledges: to bring down NHS waiting lists, get the economy growing, halve inflation this year, have debt falling, and ‘stop the boats’. The variety of timetables for these various pledges makes their intention clear: to set a series of markers that the Prime Minister can hit before an election in, we expect, the autumn of next year.
So how is the Government doing on them? Below, I review the progress on each in turn, and give them a handy mark out of ten.
Last month, NHS waiting list hit a new record high: 7.3 million. The Government also missed its self-imposed target of eliminating 18-month waits for appointments by April. Although ambulance response times had risen considerably, the data still suggested a health service creaking under post-Covid backlogs.
But, as Paul Waugh has highlighted, the numbers do seem to be going in the right direction. The NHS has a target that by April next year, no patients will be waiting longer than 65 weeks for treatment. Handy for an October election. That number is already down over 40 per cent since last year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is now predicting waiting lists will plateau this year and fall the next.
Yet this is hardly the time for Sunak and Steve Barclay to break open the alcohol-free bubbly. For waiting lists to “start falling meaningfully”, the IFS suggest the NHS would need to achieve a “truly remarkable increase” in the number of patients being treated.
But Barclay’s NHS recovery plan remains delayed, apparently due to cost concerns. And while an end game around strikes appears insight, one cannot predict how future strike action – or flu seasons – might add to hospital numbers. A cautiously optimistic 7/10.
Earlier this year the IMF predicted that the UK would be the only major country to shrink its GDP this year – by 0.6 per cent, specifically. Since then, they first halved their forecast recession, and then scrapped it. They now predict our economy will grow by 0.4 per cent growth. So far in 2023, the UK economy has grown by 0.1 per cent.
As such, the Government looks on track to deliver growth. But 0.4 per cent growth is woeful compared to the post-war average of 2.5 per cent – or even the post 2008 average of 0.8 per cent. Voters are hardly going to feel better off. And as Jeremy Hunt admitted last week, a recession might be no bad thing, if it tackles the cancer of inflation. An unenthusiastic 8/10.
Speaking of which, it was Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation that was the most remarkable of the January five. That’s for the simple reason that controlling inflation is not supposed to be the Government’s job. That task lies with Andrew Bailey and the Bank of England – not always friends of ConservativeHome.
When Sunak made his speech, the consensus was that inflation would fall rapidly in the coming months. It thus made sense to Downing Street to try and claim an easy win by trying to take credit for something that was going to happen anyway. Unfortunately, inflation has refused to play ball.
Energy prices have plummeted, as predicted. But food inflation has remained stubbornly high, and core inflation – excluding food and energy prices – is rising at its highest rate since 1992. Inflation was over 10 per cent in March, and still 8.7 per cent in April. The Bank of England has now revised up its inflation forecast for December this year from 3.9 per cent to 5 per cent.
That would still be a halving of the 10.5 per cent rate of last December. Some commentators suggest the record rate of monetary tightening we have seen should ensure inflation falls rapidly in the coming months. More interest rate rises can be expected. But allied with our persistent lack of growth, still won’t feel better off even if this pledge is delivered. A gloomy 5/10.
In last year’s Autumn Statement, Jeremy Hunt announced the Conservatives’ latest fiscal rule: to have debt falling as a share of GDP within the next five years. As he demonstrated in both then and at the Budget, that rule largely manifests itself in St Augustine’s approach to fiscal probity: give me spending cuts, oh lord, but not yet.
So although public sector net debt reached a record high of £2.36 trillion at the end of last month – £170.1 billion higher than a year before – if Hunt can announce in this autumn’s Budget that the restraint of some future Chancellor when I’m 28 will have spending and borrowing falling, he can claim this target has been met. And how many voters, quite honestly, would care? A sneaky 9/10.
This is the big one. When Sunak pledged in January that those who arrived in the country illegally would be “detained and swiftly removed”, he seemed to be promising the near-impossible. When our Editor asked him if he could fulfill his pledge by the next election, he demurred. If the Prime Minister isn’t sure he will hit his target, why should we be?
Yet this is the pledge on which (if you spend any time talking Number 10 people) one gets the impression that Sunak is devoting the most personal bandwidth to. And wisely: small boat arrivals, and the housing of migrants in hotels, symbolise the Government’s immigration impotence. Over 45,000 arrived last year. Currently, this year’s numbers are tracking below that – but not by much.
Hence the pursuit of the Illegal Immigration Bill, and the steady progress of the Rwanda policy through the courts. The ambition is for the pair to act as a deterrent: as soon as flights start taking off, the business model of the people smugglers will be ruined, and numbers will plummet. If Sunak achieved that, it would be game-changing.
Will it work? As Fraser Nelson has highlighted, the number of illegal migrants from Albania has fallen from accounting for almost half of all arrivals since Sunak signed a deportation deal with the country’s prime minister. The hope is that if the courts give the thumbs up and the first flights take off this summer, a similar drop could be seen.
Unlikely, I imagine. From various discussions with figures in government, it is clear that every sinew is being strained to deliver this policy. But if it gets bogged down in court cases and the European Convention rears its ugly head, calls to withdraw from the ECHR withdrawal will only get louder – and trust in Sunak’s ability to do what he says will shrink. An optimistic 4/10
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In all, I would sound a note of cautious optimism about Sunak’s ability to reach his pledges – a combined score of 33/50. But a lot lies beyond his control, in the hands of Andrew Bailey, NHS managers, and the courts both over here and in Brussels. With his usual energy and a little luck, the Prime Minister might reach his targets, but the margin of error remains high.
Even then, Sunak may hope that even if he does not reach his self-imposed pledges, he will be seen by voters to have tried hard enough that he can be given the benefit of the doubt. A similar approach was taken by Boris Johnson towards delivering Brexit in 2019. Yet Johnson was a known Leaver, and had the Vote Leave samurai behind him. Sunak remains a more unknown quantity to the electorate.
Which raises two crucial questions. Have voters even heard of these five pledges? And, most importantly, do they even care?
Sunak may declare Mission Accomplished at some point next spring. But if incomes are still shrinking, illegal migrants are still arriving, and voters are waiting months for an operation, they are hardly going to thank him. Even if he can hit his five pledges, it might not help him at all.