If I’d still been a Conservative Party member during the leadership election earlier this year then I would, like many other Tory Party members would have done, have picked Kemi Badenoch for leader. She has in my view many of the correct qualities that the party needs to engage with the public and get the Tory Party vote out. She was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth but comes from hard working middle class stock and has worked her way up in both software engineering and banking before she entered politics. She also is favourable to the sort of social conservativism that is more widely adhered to by the public than the London-centric media and activist class might assume, in other words she is anti-Woke.

However with the state of the economy, not helped by new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s fiscal policies whilst as Chancellor, I’m beginning to wonder whether she dodged a bullet? The economy is in such a dire mess with inflation, the effects of poor policy making on issues like energy security, a lack of growth and productivity issues, that being PM at this time is going to be like being handed a poisoned chalice.

The economic situation is so dire that any PM elected or appointed at this time is going to face a lot of problems and is going to have very little room to manoeuvrer fiscally. Spending cuts are almost certainly going to have to be made and it is quite possible that they will end up being made not in areas where there is a considerable amount of fat, as those parts of government that constitute the fat will protect their own interests, but in more vital and needed areas. Taxes will also rise in order to pay for the government’s mistakes. Because cuts will come to areas that are intimately connected to Briton’s well being we could soon be placed in a situation where Rishi Sunak, a man of fabulous wealth, is telling increasingly poor Britons no matter whether the Briton is a welfare recipient or a worker ‘no you can’t have the money for a coat for your child’ or ‘you can’t heat your home’ or ‘you can’t pay your rent or mortgage’. The tax increases will also hit those who are self employed or who are managing small companies, further damaging the ability of the nation to progress financially.

I suspect that Rishi Sunak’s wealth will become a political issue both for the Parliamentary opposition in the form of the Labour Party and among the alt-parties that are increasingly, in the case of Reform and the SDP, looking like viable recipients for Briton’s votes. This is not the mid to late 19^th century where fabulously wealthy aristocrats with massive holdings of land could make decisions adversely affecting the poor of the nation without much in the way of scrutiny. The voting franchise is far more extensive than it was back then and anger among the populace about particular policies or political personalities spreads quicker and wider than it once did due to changes in communications and media. I can quite easily see a situation arising where Rishi Sunak’s name becomes a shorthand way of describing an elite who don’t give a damn about anything or anyone else apart from their own power and influence. I can also see how this sort of image could cause a collapse in the Tory vote as those who had previously given the Tories their votes start to see the extent of the fiscal problems and how divorced from everyday reality Rishi Sunak is.

Rishi Sunak has become Prime Minister at a particularly bad time and unlike Margaret Thatcher when she took over from Labour’s James Callaghan, doesn’t appear to have any sort of plan to make the country better. Sunak is also a child of privilege who is said by some media outlets to be more wealthy than the King and this will be seized upon by political opponents both within Parliament and outside it. Sunak is a man who looks on the face of it to be out of touch and I would not be surprised to find that this will come back to haunt him and the Conservative Party. There are many who will give the benefit of the doubt to people like Jacob Rees-Mogg despite his riches, because in large part he’s made his fortune himself rather than, as with Sunak, having it handed to him on a plate by his in-laws.

I can quite easily foresee a time, maybe not too far away, when Rishi Sunak’s wealth and his inability to put himself in the shoes of suffering Britons will lose the Conservative Party votes. Rishi Sunak could be the man who sends the Tories into the wilderness or who at least is identified with the Tories historical and ongoing economic failures. If Kemi Badenoch had won the first of this year’s Tory leadership contests then she would have been landed with the economic and political mess that her party had created and it’s maybe better that politicians like her step back until after the mess that will erupt calms down even if the mess causes the Tories to lose the next General Election. Let Rishi Sunak own his policies and his failures as Chancellor by being Prime Minister and having to deal with the consequences. There is a place in the future for a new and improved Tory leader and Tory party but just not yet.