Rishi Sunak leads the stand-out silly party of the silly season

The Tories tried to make the political weather this summer with ‘small boats week’ and ‘health week’, writes Andrew Grice. But they made fools of themselves and rained on their own parade

Wrong kind of buzz: The government may have accidentally amplified the very issues they are failing to deliver on (POOL/AFP via Getty)

Our politicians have a dilemma while parliament is on its summer break: should they save their energy for a time when voters will pay at least some attention, or try to set the agenda? The opposition, whether Conservative or Labour, often makes more effort to fill the media vacuum than the governing party. After all, oppositions can’t really do anything, but they can grab headlines.

This summer is different. The government is trying much harder than usual to make the political weather. Ahead of the six-week recess, Downing Street put strong pressure on Whitehall departments to deliver the goodies for a summer campaign – one way of ensuring any prime minister’s writ runs.

But the weather this exercise produced has often been rain – on the government’s own parade. True, ministers scored some runs when they devoted one week to announcements on energy, including Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “max out” North Sea oil and gas reserves.

More people support issuing new licences than the ban favoured by Labour. Sunak’s pledge not only divided Labour from many voters but also caused tensions within Keir Starmer’s party – making it a good “wedge” issue.

Ministers have also looked on the ball this week – unofficially labelled “education week” because of the GCSE results. The themed weeks on energy and education were relatively low key, but the two intervening weeks, which the government trumpeted as “small boats week” and “health week” respectively, merely advertised the government’s failure and weakness on both issues.

“Small boats week” lands the prize for how not to run a summer campaign. The timing was flawed, given that better weather was bound to increase the number of migrants crossing the Channel. Holding them on the Bibby Stockholm barge was meant to show the government is moving asylum seekers out of hotels – an issue on which Tory MPs in constituencies hundreds of miles from Dover are badgering ministers because, as one northern MP put it, “my local hotels are full up with migrants”. But using the barge turned to farce as the 35 people on it had to be evacuated due to a health scare.

Remarkably, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, declined to do media interviews – even though the boats are her department’s most urgent priority. The government managed to drive a wedge between different factions inside the Home Office, which were described as a “circular firing squad”.

This week, Sunak admitted he might not be able to “stop the boats” by next year’s election. No wonder the public isn’t impressed. Opinium Research found that the salience of illegal migration increased after “small boats week” – but so did Labour’s lead on the issue because the public don’t have confidence in the Tories’ measures.

As “health week” began, Steve Barclay, the health secretary, found himself inundated with questions about the boats. His health announcements were eclipsed when plans to dilute cancer targets leaked out early. Another triumph.

The case for the defence is that the media would have focused on these issues in any case and Labour would have made the summer running, so it was better for ministers to be on the pitch and the front foot.

However, some Tory MPs privately worry the two “themed weeks” magnified issues on which the government is not delivering. “‘Small boats week’ was a disaster,” one told me. The Tories have managed to look like the silly party during this year’s silly season.

Tory optimists argue they are trying out dividing lines with Labour they can draw at the election and that the summer campaign will allow them to learn from their mistakes. That’s true; there have been plenty of them.

The real lesson is that such a “divide and rule” strategy works only when an issue really matters to the public – Tory “culture wars” on matters like trans rights do not – and when people are confident the party can deliver on it. This approach worked brilliantly for Boris Johnson on Brexit at the 2019 election; Labour was on the wrong side of public opinion and divided amongst itself, while voters trusted Johnson to “get Brexit done”.

Sunak does not have such a potent weapon to deploy. He is very much on the back foot. Today the public do care about the NHS and small boats but don’t believe the Tories have the answers. Crucially, most voters don’t trust them on what they regard as by far the most important issue – the economy.