Sunak's 100 days as Prime Minister: is it the 1990s all over again?

TODAY marks Rishi Sunak’s 100th day in office, an appropriate milestone to look back from, although many commentators are peering even further back, to the early 1990s, for comparisons.

But they don’t know whether to draw positive references from the past that point to Mr Sunak being capable of pulling off an unlikely election win or whether really Mr Sunak’s destiny is to be as a tail-end Charlie of a plane heading down to defeat.

Even in our increasingly polarised society, it must be possible to agree that since the Richmond MP became Prime Minister 100 days, he has stabilised the country after the rollercoaster of the Johnson years and the expensive plummet of the Truss minutes.

In comparison with his headline-grabbing predecessors, he tried to bring boring back to the heart of the government, talking of “integrity, professionalism and accountability” – three very long and complicated ideas unlike Mr Johnson’s three-word soundbites to “get Brexit done” or “stay at home”.

Mr Sunak’s policy on strikes seems to be to ignore them until strikers and public get bored by which time he hopes that inflation will have dropped and so the moral argument for pay rises will have faded. Perhaps his policy is working as, on the biggest day of industrial action for decades, strikes didn’t get a mention at Prime Minister’s Questions until they were raised by Durham’s Mary Kelly Foy.

Rishi Sunak addresses the Labour benches at PMQs yesterday (Image: PA Wire)

Rishi Sunak addresses the Labour benches at PMQs yesterday

In being so boring, Mr Sunak reminds some observers of the ultimate grey man of politics, John Major. A former Chancellor, like Mr Sunak, in 1990 Mr Major took over a divided party, like Mr Sunak, that was lagging badly in the polls, like Mr Sunak, and which he tried to mend by his personal decency, like Mr Sunak.

Mr Sunak’s task is enormous: at the weekend, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour was 25 points in front.

Yet at the Cabinet away day at Chequers last week, the star turn, Lord Hague of Richmond, drew comfort from 1992 when Mr Major overcame the feeling that it was time for a change and pulled off an unexpected election victory.

John Major on his soapbox during the 1992 election campaign

Mr Hague – who preceded Mr Sunak as Richmond MP – said that today, there is no excitement in the country for Labour, certainly not as there was for Sedgefield’s Tony Blair in 1997, so Mr Sunak has a chance if he plods steadfastly on, chipping away at Mr Starmer. At PMQs yesterday, Mr Sunak went out of his way to chip at Labour’s wokery on women’s issues and at Mr Starmer’s support for left-wing Jeremy Corbyn – topics which will unite traditional Tories and red wall voters.

But what if Mr Hague is a few months out in his historical time-travelling?

Less than a year after the 1992 election, Mr Major launched his “back to basics” initiative, which became synonymous with hypocritical sleaze.

This looks like Mr Sunak’s promise to restore “integrity”, which shines a new light on every ministerial transgression. Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs – at the very least, he paid a whopping penalty for being “careless” – were never full of integrity and so Mr Sunak was forced to sack him as Conservative Party chairman. The deputy chairman is the Stockton South’s Matt Vickers. He once said he had “stacked shelves, pulled pints, and laid bricks” in his constituency; now he is one of the favourites to run the party in Westminster.

Stockton South's Matt Vickers is apparently in the running to replace Nadhim Zahawi as chairman of the Conservative Party

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has 24 bullying allegations against him and when eventually the report into his conduct is complete, his integrity will be seriously questioned. There will soon be developments on PPE contracts, featuring Baroness Mone, and on investigations into Boris Johnson, whose integrity is unceasingly open to question.

Simon Clark, the Middlesbrough South MP, suggested a nurse on £35,000 should never need to use a foodbank if they budgeted properly, and yet Prime Minister Johnson on £164,080 was in such financial difficulties that he was casting around for an £800,000 loan from an unaccountable cast of curious characters.

Each time Mr Major tried to relaunch himself, a back to basics scandal blew him off course. On Monday, Mr Sunak made an important announcement in Darlington about 800 new ambulances and improved response times, but the Zahawi scandal drowned it all out.

Back in the 1990s, Labour portrayed Mr Major as a weak leader, held hostage by the rival factions in his own party – he once complained about the “bastards” in his Cabinet – and today, Labour is trying to paint Mr Sunak in the same way. Yesterday, in a PMQs that hinted at the acrimony to come, Mr Starmer labelled him “rank pathetic”.

Sunderland's Bridget Phillipson, facing the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, is a rising star of Labour

 Mr Starmer is also utilising another tactic from the 1990s. As Mr Major weakened, Mr Blair became confident in his position and allowed other members of his team to come to the fore – Brown, Cook, Straw, Mowlam – and in recent weeks we’ve suddenly seen far more of Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Shadow Health Wes Streeting and, perhaps most impressive of all, Shadow Education Bridget Phillipson, who represents Houghton and Sunderland South.

In the 1990s, Mr Major was never able to convince the electorate he was anything but the tailend of Thatcher government of the 1980s, and Mr Sunak is also struggling to escape his inheritance, as so many of the messes he is trying to manage his way out of were caused by his predecessors.

Lord Hague is right in that there is no great excitement in the country about the prospect of a Starmer government, but the events of Mr Sunak’s first 100 days suggest that if he should win the next election, it will be a much bigger surprise than Mr Major’s triumph in 1992.