On 25th October 2023 Rishi Sunak completed a year as the Prime Minister of the UK. One cannot overstate the significance of this event, as a young man of Indian heritage and a proud Hindu, helms a country that had ruled over India for 200 years. This momentous event surprised the whole world as for many years, Indians were seen as inferior and backward.
British media with the exception of the Times have been extremely negative of PM Sunak’s achievements so far. However, this is nothing new, right from the time he took office the media adopted a new strategy to undermine Rishi Sunak. News related to him was relegated to pages four or five. As an example, Rishi Sunak attended the G20 summit in India. He met the Narendra Modi and other world leaders but there was nothing in the BBC TV news. This way, the media avoids being accused of being biased and at the same time undermines the PM.
Now that the PM has completed one year in office, the print media has tried very hard to create an image that Sunak is unfit for office. Here is what Guardian's Martin Kettle wrote on 26 October: “Sunak's shambolic Government is achieving nothing. Must Britain wait 15 months(that is when new elections are due) to throw him out?”
The Guardian's editorial dated 27 October did not hold back in its dislike of Sunak. It thundered: “The charge that the PM abstained from voting at the Commons vote on the Privileges Committee report on Boris Johnson was emblematic of the cowardice and weak judgement that makes Mr Sunak incapable of shaking off a long, toxic incumbency.”
The Times on the other hand presented a much more balanced picture. It acknowledged that Sunak is on course to meet the biggest pledge he made when he took office which was to halve inflation. It was 10.1% in January and 6.7% now and falling. His second pledge to improve the economy has also been achieved as it has grown by .5%.
On the negative side, the cost of living crisis and the tax burden are on course to reach the highest level since 1950. To mitigate the cost of living impact the PM has helped families with £3,300 cost of living support. Working parents can now access 30 hours free childcare a week for 38 weeks of the year for children who are 9 months to when they are old enough to go to school. The NHS waiting list is at a record high with 7.7 million people waiting for treatment.
Sunak believes this is due to the doctors' strike on pay. He has unveiled a plan to see more than 300,000 extra nurses, doctors and other staff employed in the NHS in England in the coming years. There will be a major shake-up in how the NHS
operates. Regarding the illegal boat crossings, the PM has taken bold steps to bring this to a halt by working closely with the French. The number of crossings has fallen by a third and the home office is on course to clear the 92,000 backlog of asylum cases.
The plan to move illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda depends on the outcome of the Supreme Court hearing. Sunak has also taken the bold decision to scrap HS2's Northern railway link to Manchester. The £36 billion pound saved
will be spent on improving regional transport. He has also successfully resolved the Northern Ireland Protocol issue in the Windsor Framework. Anyone who knows anything about the region and its violent history will acknowledge that this indeed was a personal triumph and proof of his ability to successfully deal with insurmountable problems.
Sunak has also taken a bold initiative to raise the educational standards in the country. He has been especially concerned with the standard of Maths in the country. The new Advanced British Standard will put technical and academic education on an equal footing. Every student will study some form of Maths and English up to age 18. An initial £600m funding boost has been given to schools and colleges to support teacher recruitment and retention and help more students pass Maths and English GCSE.
Sunak has also introduced a radical programme to eradicate smoking. Anyone who is 14 years old this year will never be able to buy cigarettes. The proposed new legislation will make it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products – effectively raising the smoking age by a year each year until it applies to the whole population. This has the potential to phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040. He has announced the creation of 12 Freeports across the UK.
According to the PM, this will create tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of investment across the whole of the UK, with 2 Freeports in Wales, 2 in Scotland and 8 in England. The government has also delivered on recruiting 20,000 more police officers. He has joined the CPTPP, an £11 trillion trade pact with 11 countries, the only European country to do so. In the near future, Sunak will sign the most prized free trade pact with India.
He has also initiated an action plan to put the UK as a frontrunner in Artificial Intelligence. Under his leadership, the UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety in November. Though the media is trying to portray Sunak as a failure, the facts speak otherwise. As conditions improve in 2024 the gap between the Labour and Conservatives will get narrower. Sunak has everything to play for.
