Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have now both made major speeches setting out their pitch to voters for the new year. Sunak got in first yesterday (report here, and text of the speech here), and Starmer delivered his this morning (report here, and text of the speech here) – although, as he pointed out, Labour booked the venue and scheduled their speech first. Sunak set out five pledges, two of which he promised to achieve this year, and the others he implied would be done by the time of the next election. The promises were widely dismissed as unimpressive, because with the exception of an ambiguously-worded one on small boats, they were all outcomes that are likely to happen anyway. But it sounded like a transactional deal with voters, and Sunak was setting himself as someone who could go into an election campaign with a record of delivery. He said: Others may talk about change, I will deliver it. James Johnson, a respected pollster who used to work for Theresa May, said the speech showed that the Tories are responding to the concerns of the public.
But the speech also highlighted the weakness of Sunak’s position. Elections usually end up as a contest between change and more of the same (2019 was an exception – there were two change offers), but in his speech Sunak said very little in defence of the Conservative government’s record since 2010. Sunak said that the NHS was facing “challenges” and that people were looking ahead to 2023 “with apprehension”, but Starmer probably gave a much more realistic assessment of the plight facing the country. He said: Houses that get burgled countless times yet the police never come. Hospitals putting out messages begging patients to stay away from A&E. Children going to school hungry. And it’s not just the poorest who are struggling. Millions of families, pensioners, working people – people who’ve always kept their heads above water – are going without decent food and heating. Cutting back on their holidays, their meals out, Christmas presents – all the little things that make life more enjoyable. While Sunak channelled Tony Blair (a pledge card, a long passage in the speech on the importance of family), Starmer cleverly appropriated Boris Johnson’s 2019 message, saying that Labour’s decentralisation programme would allow local communities to “take back control”. He announced Labour would include a “take back control” bill in its first king’s speech. Leftwingers were disappointed by another passage in the speech saying that Labour could not just rely on big spending to address the nation’s problems, but overall (and partly because, unlike Sunak, he was prepared to deliver an unpalatable message to his party) the speech was easily the more impressive of the two. The PM’s speech was rambling, while Starmer’s was well structured around a coherent argument. And while Sunak was unable to offer any real explanation for why so much with the country was going wrong, Starmer did have an analysis; Westminster politics did not work, he said, because “no similar country puts so much decision-making in the hands of so few people”. Ministers have announced anti-strike legislation to enforce “minimum service levels” in six key public services including the NHS and schools as Rishi Sunak scrambles to get a grip on industrial disputes. Rishi Sunak faces accusations he has misled the public after it emerged hospitals and councils have not received £300m in emergency funding to free up NHS beds that was first promised four months ago. Plans to privatise Channel 4 have been formally abandoned, ending years of threats to the broadcaster that cost the government millions of pounds and were opposed by the vast majority of the media industry.