Think Rishi Sunak’s a moderate, middle of the road Mr Nice Guy? Think again

He masks it with genteel manners and a nice smile, but in any previous Conservative government, even that of Margaret Thatcher, Sunak would have been a token headbanger, writes Sean O’Grady – it’s the party’s lurch to the right that has made the PM seem palatable

There’s sum thing about Rishi: The prime minister visits the Wren Academy, in Finchley, London (Getty Images)

Lots of people seem puzzled as to why Rishi Sunak – sensible, steady, rational Rishi Sunak – is going hell-for-leather with the Rwanda Bill in the latest attempt to resuscitate what his own home secretary called a “bats**t” policy.

Some surmise that he’s being pressured by the European Research Group and the other members of the Tory in-house mafiosi in the “five families”. Others speculate about his need to win back disillusioned voters, particularly in the red wall, disgusted by the small boats “invasion”. Perhaps there’s even an element of pride, albeit a slightly petulant expression of it.

There is something, I’m sure, in all that conjecture. But how about the possibility (strange, I know) that Sunak actually believes in the Rwanda plan, and doesn’t for one moment regret making it the totem of his entire premiership?

As a rational man (which he is), to expend so much political capital on a scheme so apparently doomed suggests that he believes in the policy – and has equally strong faith in his ability to see off his critics and make it work. A touch of arrogance? Well, people who make it to No 10 usually possess an unusual degree of self-confidence.

Certainly, Sunak inherited the gimmicky Rwanda idea of depriving refugees of their human rights from Boris Johnson and Priti Patel. But no one forced him to carry on with it.

Just like Dominic Raab’s modern Bill of Rights – or the HS2 project – Sunak could have ditched it if he’d wanted. It would have been unpopular in his party but at least he wouldn’t have mortgaged his premiership on it. The prime minister, it shouldn’t need repeating, does have some agency in these matters.

Because we’ve become so accustomed to the Tory party’s unsympathetic (to say the very least) language around migration, it takes a little effort to remember just how authoritarian and right wing the party has become as a whole in recent years – and that goes for its leader, as well.

No previous Tory government would have casually suggested we suspend human rights in the name of some bogus doctrine of “parliamentary sovereignty”, yet that is precisely what Sunak is doing right now.

It says on the face of the Rwanda bill that its provisions are not consistent with British human rights legislation – and Sunak is OK with that. In fact, he’d have gone further if he could have gotten away with it but, ironically, the Rwandan government would have collapsed the deal if he had tried to do so.

The fact that he hasn’t gone as far as Mark Francois and Lee Anderson want him to doesn’t make Sunak some kind of lefty. He’s more than happy to deride Keir Starmer as being “just another lefty lawyer standing in our way”.

Sunak doesn’t have much more respect for our judiciary than Suella Braverman – it’s just that he’s a little more measured in the abuse he dishes out. He didn’t sack her because she was too extremist and she upset what she calls “polite society”; he sacked her because she defied him and put stuff in the press without approval. His politics, in practice, are not so different to hers, and his Rwanda bill is indeed only an inch away from what she and her allies are demanding.

Because Sunak has a nice smile, impeccable manners, a technocratic vibe about him and is good with Excel spreadsheets, people think he’s bound to be some sort of centrist or moderate; the kind of pragmatic liberal chap that the Tories used to have running the country. Well, he ain’t.

He’s a self-proclaimed Thatcherite, a dedicated Leaver by conviction long before it was fashionable (unlike Johnson, May or Truss, funnily enough), and a doctrinal believer in the small state (despite failure to achieve such an ambition). He’d love to slash taxes, Thatcher-style, but he can’t do so because of the state of the public finances and he knows he can’t crash the economy like Truss did.

He appointed five members of the ERG to his cabinet. He’s pally with Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right premier. He says he wouldn’t mind having Nigel Farage – a man openly committed to destroying his party – as a Conservative member because it’s “a broad church”.

In his leadership campaign, he pledged not to have any more lockdowns in the face of any future pandemic. The Covid inquiry demonstrated, rather uncomfortably, how unwilling he was to listen to scientific advice about saving lives when it got in the way of economic growth.

When he was running for leader, he suggested fining people £10 if they missed a GP appointment. He wants a basic rate of income tax at 16 per cent by 2029 (fanciful though it is).

When it became politically expedient, he sacrificed the green agenda and relaxed the deadlines for electrifying new cars and home heating: notably, he only bothered to show up at Cop28 for half a day to brag about scrapping his environmental targets. He is as hardline in his support for Israel as anyone at the top of politics. Mention the Elgin Marbles to him and he’ll cancel your lunch appointment.

The nonsense he spouted at the Tory conference about seven recycling bins, Labour’s “meat tax” and the asinine declaration that “a man is a man and a woman is a woman, it is just common sense” betrays a fairly callous approach to the “culture wars”. And he wants much, much lower immigration, legal and otherwise. Maybe Rishi really isn’t as nice and moderate as he seems…?

In any previous Conservative government, even that of Margaret Thatcher, Sunak would have been one of those token right-wing headbangers, bunged into a job where they couldn’t do much harm.

His brains and mostly personable demeanour would have ensured success; but he would always have been on the far right, and never considered a potential leader. Today, as I say, the Conservative Party has been so thoroughly pushed to the populist right and “Ukipped” into militant Euroscepticism that Sunak’s views, which would have been considered outlandish not so long ago, can be painted as mainstream.

That is actually why his party is in so much trouble, because it is so out of touch with the broad instincts of the British people, who have not lurched as far to the right as the Tories like to think.

The terrifying thing is that, in a few months, after the Labour landslide, the Tories will shift even further to the right because they think Sunak was just a softy liberal. Maybe they really will end up with Farage as leader, after all.