LONDON —
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak marked one year in office on Wednesday with little to celebrate, as wars on the international stage provide a grim backdrop to his domestic challenges.
Furthermore, another year seems to haunt his Conservative Party: 1996.
Then, as now, the party had been in power for more than a decade, but opinion polls gave the opposition an advantage and conservative dissent and scandals dominated the headlines. The following year, voters ousted the Conservatives, giving a landslide victory to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party.
Many Conservatives fear that the party will suffer the same fate in an election that must be called at the end of 2024. The Conservatives are between 15 and 20 points behind Labor in opinion polls, a distance that has barely moved during the Sunak’s year in office.
Research published on Wednesday by the polling firm Ipsos revealed that 65% thought the Conservatives did not deserve to be re-elected, while only 19% thought they did.
The latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, now in its third week, and the war that Russia maintains in Ukraine, have added to Sunak’s challenges.
“I know this year has been tough,” Sunak said in a message marking the anniversary. “And there is still work to be done to help working families across the country, but I am proud of the steps we have taken.”
Just over a year ago, Sunak thought he had lost his chance to be prime minister. In September 2022 he lost a Conservative leadership contest to Liz Truss, who replaced the scandal-ridden Boris Johnson as prime minister.
Then Truss announced a budget that included billions in costless tax cuts and spooked financial markets. The value of the pound plummeted, the cost of public borrowing soared and Truss announced his resignation after just six weeks in office. The party elected Sunak to replace her, and he became the third British prime minister of the year.
“Some mistakes were made,” Sunak said outside 10 Downing Street on October 25, 2022. “And I have been elected leader of my party and its prime minister, in part, to fix them.”
He promised that his government would have “integrity, professionalism and responsibility at all levels.”
2023-10-25 18:34:48
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