Sunak’s ‘tough’ decisions are not all that tough

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Good morning from Manchester. Rishi Sunak has a plan to revitalise the Conservative party, and it gets its big premiere in his speech this morning. Will it work? Some thoughts in today’s note.

Small change

Effective political communication has to have the subtlety of a sledgehammer, because most people don’t give all that much time or attention to politics. Boris Johnson’s removal of the whip from the Conservative party’s most committed opponents of a no-deal Brexit and David Cameron’s visit to a glacier in Norway to look sad about climate change were both big political gestures designed to convey the same message: the Conservative party has changed.

Now Rishi Sunak wants — and needs — to do the same thing. There are many reasons why the Conservatives trail in the opinion polls, but the one that is easiest for the prime minister to address is: the Tory party has been in office for 13 years and the Labour leader doesn’t scare people.

The theory behind Sunak’s various announcements this week is that by announcing a new set of policy priorities he can establish himself as a new and fresh leader. That many of his priorities offend other Conservatives, and cause high-profile rows, only helps to establish the perception that he is a changed Conservative leader and this is a reformed Tory party.

Will it work? I think it works better in theory than in practice. Sunak’s big message today is that he is making the “tough” decisions that opponents and previous leaders had refused to make after 30 years of incentivising “the easy decision, not the right one”. But I think for a political message to work it has to align with the policy reality, and, ultimately, Sunak’s “long-term decisions for a better future” are not all that tough.

It is not tough to say “I’m not going to build HS2”, just as it is not tough to say “I am going to build HS2” because most people don’t care about HS2. It is not a tough decision to say that people won’t have to buy an electric car if buying new until 2035 instead of 2030 — quite the reverse, in fact. It is not tough to say that young people will be banned from buying cigarettes or that people won’t face 20mph zones — these are popular decisions! It is not a tough decision to oppose congestion charges, because most people do not like congestion charges. Saying that Labour will introduce a meat tax may be challenging in that it requires you to keep a straight face on air when journalists point out you are telling porkie pies, but there is no great constituency calling for taxes on meat.

Sunak has made tough decisions in the past — raising income tax to meet the Conservatives’ manifesto pledges on extra police, new hospitals and better public services, as well as resigning from Johnson’s government — but these decisions are very far from that.

My general feeling is that Sunak can demonstrate change and a breach from what has gone before — but only if he makes a genuinely tough decision in today’s speech.

Now try this

I’m at that point in party conference season where I start to crave nothing more than a meal I’ve cooked myself. My absolute favourite simple recipe — and one of the meals I absolutely could not live without — is pasta alla norma: aubergines, tomatoes, oregano and chilli with lots of olive oil.

I first discovered this recipe via Anna Jones’ excellent vegetarian cookbooks, though the best approximation I can find online is this version by the New York Times. There is also a needlessly complicated version in Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple (how could it be otherwise?) while Delicious Magazine gives you the best rundown on how to cook it but is lacking in oregano, inexplicably in my view. Anyway, let me know your simple, preferably vegetarian (I always end up eating more meat during conference than I would otherwise) recipes or your preferred take on pasta alla norma.

Top stories today

• MAC-track over foreign worker rules? | The UK government’s migration advisers have called for the abolition of one of the main routes through which employers can hire overseas workers in sectors facing chronic staff shortages.

• Ongoing strikes hit ‘fragile’ NHS | Frontline health leaders are bracing for one of the NHS’s toughest winters as FT analysis of official data shows it entering the season with a deep gulf between demand and supply, threatening to put emergency services under intense pressure for the second year running.

• Manchester ‘madness’ | According to ministers, the prime minister decided to scrap HS2 north of Birmingham last month, arguing that more than £30bn could be released for other transport projects in the Midlands and north.

• ‘Rabidly anti-HS2’ aide | If Rishi Sunak pulls the plug on the northern leg of HS2 as expected, it will vindicate one of his advisers, Andrew Gilligan, who has railed against the scheme for more than a decade.

• Record cost of national debt | The interest the government pays on national debt has reached a 20-year high as the rate on 30-year bonds reaches 5.05 per cent, the BBC’s Vishala Sri-Pathma and Faisal Islam report.