Since it's clearly nuts to hypothesise that Sunak did not think about the problems of the country and yet he failed to do very much* about the problems of the country, it is then interesting to explore what shaped his responses, because I do agree with Dan that they are baffling. So then for me the enquiry becomes "what warped his thinking?"
So Rwanda is an interesting way into this. He had a window to turn the volume right down on this - not necessarily bringing it to an end but at least focusing the discourse away from it. There were two very good reasons why he might be expected to have done that. First, he's not actually a nutter and it's the most unworkable policy in the history of policies. Second, he's a fucking Treasury bod and it's very, very expensive. There is nothing in Sunak's revealed history to suggest that this policy would be in line with his convictions. Instead, he doubled down, thus creating the single biggest unnecessary problem of his premiership and probably the most significant contribution to rendering him unelectable. HS2 is another example of policymaking that appears to have no coherent thought behind it.
So... why? What is going on here? Why has someone who presented in summer 2022 as "the sane, mature safe pair of hands candidate" suddenly pivoted to swivel-eyed loon territory?
I have absolutely no evidence in support of this theory and may be 100% completely wrong about it - I don't hold to it strongly - but I think that he has not got over losing the 2022 Party leadership election. He's never lost anything. He's had everything he wanted, and appeared successful in all his roles to date. He was promoted very very quickly in all his career pathways. CST doesn't require much of you, and he won popularity as CX through furlough and EOTHO. Correlation is in fact not causation, but if only good things ever happen to you then it is rational to conclude that you earned them and deserve them. That's how most people work. The idea that he would lose a popularity contest - and to Truss, with whom he had served in Cabinet and whom he therefore knew to be deranged - was a source of outrage to him.
So one hypothesis - which I certainly don't think is the whole picture, but I do think is part of it - is that he's trying to retroactively win that election, which is what I mean by "relitigate". I think he's still trying to convince the members that they should have voted for him, which is why his policymaking has been so incoherent, extreme and detached from reality - because those were the criteria that made Truss the winning candidate.
If we look at the q "what really comes from Sunak's own convictions", it appears to be maths teaching and banning smoking. That's the primary evidence, in my view, that he's unqualified to do the job - his utter lack of vision and strategy in terms of forming a policy platform. I don't believe for a second that he actually gives a fuck about f'rex national service.
I really need to stop now and get some work done - I've been trying to write this for about an hour! Am I making sense yet?
*I do feel quite strongly that any discussion of Sunak's premiership should not overlook the Windsor Framework, which is a genuinely significant and impressive piece of negotiation, as discussions of Johnson's and Cameron's premierships should also not overlook their achievements (Ukraine and vaccines** in the former case and gay marriage in the latter case (+?)). I can't think of any for May, but I'd like to be wrong because as my earlier comment probably reveals I have a sneaking liking for May.
**Yes I know that there was no need to leave the European Union in order to negotiate the vaccines etc. etc. I still think it was highly effective and since he damn well gets the blame for all the failures when he was at the helm, he also should get the credit for the successes.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-07-04 10:59 am (UTC)Since it's clearly nuts to hypothesise that Sunak did not think about the problems of the country and yet he failed to do very much* about the problems of the country, it is then interesting to explore what shaped his responses, because I do agree with Dan that they are baffling. So then for me the enquiry becomes "what warped his thinking?"
So Rwanda is an interesting way into this. He had a window to turn the volume right down on this - not necessarily bringing it to an end but at least focusing the discourse away from it. There were two very good reasons why he might be expected to have done that. First, he's not actually a nutter and it's the most unworkable policy in the history of policies. Second, he's a fucking Treasury bod and it's very, very expensive. There is nothing in Sunak's revealed history to suggest that this policy would be in line with his convictions. Instead, he doubled down, thus creating the single biggest unnecessary problem of his premiership and probably the most significant contribution to rendering him unelectable. HS2 is another example of policymaking that appears to have no coherent thought behind it.
So... why? What is going on here? Why has someone who presented in summer 2022 as "the sane, mature safe pair of hands candidate" suddenly pivoted to swivel-eyed loon territory?
I have absolutely no evidence in support of this theory and may be 100% completely wrong about it - I don't hold to it strongly - but I think that he has not got over losing the 2022 Party leadership election. He's never lost anything. He's had everything he wanted, and appeared successful in all his roles to date. He was promoted very very quickly in all his career pathways. CST doesn't require much of you, and he won popularity as CX through furlough and EOTHO. Correlation is in fact not causation, but if only good things ever happen to you then it is rational to conclude that you earned them and deserve them. That's how most people work. The idea that he would lose a popularity contest - and to Truss, with whom he had served in Cabinet and whom he therefore knew to be deranged - was a source of outrage to him.
So one hypothesis - which I certainly don't think is the whole picture, but I do think is part of it - is that he's trying to retroactively win that election, which is what I mean by "relitigate". I think he's still trying to convince the members that they should have voted for him, which is why his policymaking has been so incoherent, extreme and detached from reality - because those were the criteria that made Truss the winning candidate.
If we look at the q "what really comes from Sunak's own convictions", it appears to be maths teaching and banning smoking. That's the primary evidence, in my view, that he's unqualified to do the job - his utter lack of vision and strategy in terms of forming a policy platform. I don't believe for a second that he actually gives a fuck about f'rex national service.
I really need to stop now and get some work done - I've been trying to write this for about an hour! Am I making sense yet?
*I do feel quite strongly that any discussion of Sunak's premiership should not overlook the Windsor Framework, which is a genuinely significant and impressive piece of negotiation, as discussions of Johnson's and Cameron's premierships should also not overlook their achievements (Ukraine and vaccines** in the former case and gay marriage in the latter case (+?)). I can't think of any for May, but I'd like to be wrong because as my earlier comment probably reveals I have a sneaking liking for May.
**Yes I know that there was no need to leave the European Union in order to negotiate the vaccines etc. etc. I still think it was highly effective and since he damn well gets the blame for all the failures when he was at the helm, he also should get the credit for the successes.