Irish Examiner view: Why Britain is not ready for Rishi Sunak

A Liz Truss victory does not bode well for Ireland 

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss taking part in the BBC Tory leadership debate last week.

Ireland should start planning now for what it might be like to deal with a British government led by Liz Truss, because that is the way the wind is blowing. And the prospect for us might not be very good at all.

Further recalcitrance with Europe; tensions over the North; a difficult winter ahead and a Britain that commands influence both within Nato and with Ukraine.

And an energetic new broom with something to prove. Truss is already well along the path to being dismissed here.

“The same old chaos with a little less charisma” said one commentator; the “worst possible choice” for Ireland, said another.

Observers might judge that Rishi Sunak is better qualified to be prime minister, and at the start of the year many voters would have agreed. But he has forgotten the maxim that took Bill Clinton to power in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Sunak may have had a good pandemic with quantitative easing, furloughs and boosterism (eg, “Eat out to help out”)but he appears to have become a high tax and spend chancellor, something which the Tory rank and file dislike.

His national insurance increases, changes to corporation taxes and green levies are irritation enough for them, but the spring revelations about his wife’s non-dom financial status and his green card ownership while serving as chancellor just about took the biscuit for many.

Add to that the calculated timing of his resignation, an uninspiring performance when responding to worries over household costs while facing questions from ordinary people and his embarrassing U-turn on energy Vat and it will not take very much more to cook his goose.

If Sunak fails, then it may be presented as an example of racism in British society. The reality is that he has the appearance of a complacent millionaire with other irons in the fire. The membership of the Conservative Party is not ready for that, and therefore not ready for Rishi. If he retires to his home in California for a while, they will be proved right.