Britain’s Next Prime Mnister – The Indian Snake or the Woman for All Seasons

In the contest to be next prime minister of the United Kingdom there is one clear winner _ Oxford University. The two candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, now hoping to win a majority of votes of the estimated 150,000 Tory Party members are both alumni of Oxford University, like Boris, Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson.

         There are complaints in France about the domination of graduates of ENA (École nationalie d’Administrtion) in high state office or perhaps Harvard in the United States. But Oxford has produced 28 prime ministers  of Britain’s 55 prime ministers as well as countless cabinet rank minister with Cambridge producing 14.

         So the elites of Britain know one of their own will replace the man the former French ambassador to London, the top rank diplomat, Sylvie Bermann, described in her memoir of the Brexit years as an ‘inveterate liar.”

         Both Truss and Sunak studied  for three years the odd Oxford combined course of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) which produces graduates who know not much economics, get their politics from newspapers, and a little light reading of an assortment of ancient Greek and then English philosophers.

         Liz Truss, 46, is the favourite to win. The anti-European Conservative have already adopted their Dolchstosslegende – the stab in the back legend beloved of the German nationalist right in the 1920s to explain the German Reich’s defeat in 1918.

         Her rival, Rishi Sunak, 42 was No 2 in the Boris Johnson government, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who decided to walk out the cabinet and thus trigger the process that led to Johnson’s premiership ending.

         Johnson has every right to feel aggrieved as he created Sunak who was an unknown MP when Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019. He  created a cabinet of toadies and loyalists like Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, but then found  he was betrayed.

         So for the Johnsonites in the Tory Party Sunak is now “The Snake”, the Indian cobra whose fangs did in the prime minister who made him.

         On the face of it Sunak is an unusual man to be close to supreme power in British  politics. He is an Indian Hindu, a vegetarian running in the nation of red roast beef. He is fabulously rich, almost certainly the wealthiest politician in the democratic world.

         His father-in-law is close to the hardline Indian nationalist prime minister Modi. His Hinduvata ideology is hostile to Islam which may present Sunak with problems in hoping to attract votes from the UK 3.3 million Muslim citizens.

         He went from Oxford to work for various Californian banks and investment funds and even applied for a US Green Card, the sign usually of cutting links with Britain and living an American future.

         In California, Sunak met and married the daughter of India’s richest man, a digital billionaire. The Sunaks’ family wealth is estimated to be greater than that of the Queen.

         He has a home in California and although he went to the elite English private school, Winchester, indeed becoming Head Boy there, and so speaks with the easy manner of the English ruling class he has only relatively recently sought to re-integrate back into the Englsh wealthy, ruling elites.  

         He knows nothing of the problems of most British people except in theory or from reading the press. His constituency in North Yorkshire is rich agricultural land with wealthy landowners in charge of local politics.

         His period as Chancellor coincided with the Covid Pandemic. He copied other OECD nations with furlough schemes but also approved the awarding of contracts for medical equipment to friends of Boris Johnson and Tory donors leading to corrupt contracts worth £4 billion being awarded according to UK government auditors.

         He follows a conventional neo-liberal economic policy which has seen an ever widening gap between the purchasing power of workers and the wealth increases of Britain’s rentier capitalist class.

         But all that matters for Tory activists if not voters is that Sunak is the treacherous “Snake” who ended the career of the charismatic Johnson, Britain’s Donald Turmp, the man who ended the Brexit process with two disastrous treaties negotiated with the EU that are now causing real damage to British businesses.

         So in the votes by Tory MPs to choose two final candidates who will now seek to be endorsed by party member Sunak only won support from 38% of Tory MPs . By contrast at the same stage in Tory leadership contests Boris Johnson got 66% and even the hapless Theresa May got 60%. As the rightist Tory MP Michael Fabricant tweeted “If the feedback I am now getting from Party Members is concerned, it does not augur well for Sunak. They don't like disloyalty.”

         There is another factor more difficult to discuss. It was put well by Sir Max Hasting, a lifelong Tory grandee, author of numerous WW2 nostalgia book about the glory days of Britain under Churchill saving the free world and then editor of different Tory papers including a long stint running the Daily Telegraph where he hired Boris Johnson to be the paper’s Brussels correspondent and launched Johnson on his 25 years campaign against Europe.

Writing for Bloomberg Sir Max Hastings declared “I am a cynic about Tory rank-and-filers: If Sunak is one of two candidates, and the other is white, I believe that he will lose. There is still more racism than we care to admit in some regions of Britain, just as there is in the US.”

Tory activists are obsessed with anger against so-called “wokeism” – any suggestion parts of Britain still harbours racist prejudice or that British imperial history is riddled with slavery, racism and cruelty to non-white natives far across the seas.

Sunak for good or ill as an incredibly rich Indian with nothing in common with most Brits . He may find his party’s lingering race prejudices will cost him Downing Street.

         Liz Truss by contrast has sat on every point of the political compass and is completely cynical about saying what pleases the rank and file. She marched as a schoolgirl in demonstrations against Margaret Thatcher. She was a Liberal Democrat at Oxford. She called for the abolition of the monarchy. She seduced a senior Tory MP in charge of the selection of candidates and thus secured a safe seat in in the 2010 election. 

We briefly overlapped in the Commons. Like me Ms Truss opposed Brexit and was a strong supporter of the European Union. But as soon as the only way to get advancement in politics was to become anti-European she adopted that line and now declares herself a passionara of an even deeper, more etreme rupture with the EU.

This includes reneging on part of the agreement with the EU that safeguards the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. Ms Truss has sided with catholic hating extreme Protestant identity politicians in Northern Ireland.

         If she pursues this policy at No 10 she will meet the clear opposition of President Biden and the US Congress as well as every EU national government who support Ireland on this issue.

         Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will spend the next six weeks going to Tory Party meetings to make their pitch to the Conservative Party faithful who will vote for the next Prime Minister. The result will be announced on 5th September.

Denis MacShane is the former UK Mnister of Europe. He writes on European politics.