Rishi Sunak is the one Tory who still thinks he can win

The prime minister was determined to fight for every point when grilled by MPs, writes John Rentoul. And at the No 10 Christmas reception last night there was – perhaps – a slip of when in 2024 the election might be...

Snippy or in control? Sunak appearing before the Commons Liaison Committee (PA )

If the election were decided by body language alone, then the verdict from rival Christmas receptions for Westminster journalists is that Rishi Sunak would win.

Keir Starmer was relaxed and confident when he spoke to the media pack last week and mingled afterwards, but the prime minister was energised and irrepressible when he did the same at No 10 last night. Of the two, you would have to say that Sunak wanted it more.

If Sunak felt weighed down by the assumption that has settled over SW1 like a low cloud that the Conservatives are facing near-certain defeat, he managed, mostly, to conceal it.

The only hint of a losing mindset was a complaint that the press didn’t give him enough credit for early delivery of promises. This was the set-up for a joke that Jason Groves, the political editor of the Daily Mail, had complained about when Sunak switched the Downing Street Christmas tree lights on in November, but true word, jest, and all that.

Sunak excused himself early from the reception, saying he had to “prep” for today’s grilling by the chairs of select committees. When that interrogation started, it was soon evident not only that he was as ferociously well briefed as he had been for seven hours of evidence to the Covid inquiry, but that he was determined not to concede a single point.

Sweeping aside his advisers’ worries about appearing snippy, the prime minister refused to allow any of the MPs to sum up his position in their words, and repeatedly interrupted them, talked over them and told them off for trying to put words into his mouth.

He got the better of Liam Byrne, Labour chair of the Business and Trade Committee, who told him it was “morally wrong” that capital gains were taxed less than income. Sunak pointed out that the tax system was like that when Byrne was a Treasury minister in the Labour government, and that it is “more progressive” now.

Sunak refused to let pass a comment from Dame Diana Johnson, Labour chair of the Home Affairs Committee, that there was no evidence that removing people arriving by small boats would act as a deterrent. Yes, there is, he said, claiming that the returns agreement with Albania had led to a 90 per cent reduction in arrivals from there.

On and on he went, tirelessly and tetchily defending his record. It is, mostly, not an impressive record, but select committee chairs repeatedly made the mistake of grandstanding rather than forensically probing the weak points in his arguments.

Sunak finds himself at the end of his first calendar year in office back at square one, in about the same place he was a year ago when he was still new to the job and relatively popular (or at least, less unpopular). He tried to chart a way out of that difficult place by unveiling five pledges for 2023 at the beginning of this year. Now, at the end, he has delivered just one of the five – halving inflation – and that was only just met.

Yet this Sisyphus has boundless energy, and just starts pushing that rock up the hill again. He must be the only person in the country who thinks he can win the election, but it was clear from last night’s No 10 reception that he will give himself almost as long as he can to do so.

He appeared to give the assembled journalists what they wanted, namely a news story, when he confirmed that 2024 would “definitely” be “an election year”. This was hardly a definitive ruling out of January 2025, the latest month in which an election could legally be held, because if he did eventually decide to run out the clock, what would people say? “But, prime minister, last Christmas you promised…”?

However, I gained a better understanding of Sunak’s thinking in conversation with a cabinet minister who spoke about the challenges facing whoever was the new government if it took over in “late November or December” next year. Obviously, the prime minister hasn’t decided yet, but I’m putting the second half of November and the first half of December in my diary.

With his irrepressible optimism, Sunak thinks his second year as prime minister will go better than his first. He thinks he has the arguments that will turn public opinion around. By this time next year, we will find out if he was right this time.