Sunak vs. Starmer: what does new PM mean for Labour?

Keir Starmer will face off against his third Tory prime minister in as many months after Rishi Sunak enters No. 10 today.

The former chancellor brings a new set of challenges for his Labour rival as Starmer seeks to maintain his party’s hefty lead in the polls. And as Sunak prepares for his first Prime Minister’s Questions as Tory leader, he too will be aware that “while he has won the keys to Downing Street”, his “next opponent will be the Labour leader in a general election”, said Sky News.

What did the papers say?

“Sunak is bad news for Labour and the opposition parties, and they may as well face up to it,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. The Tories now have not only “a decent new leader”, but also “a new ‘narrative’”.

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Boris Johnson was accused of damaging the Tory party’s moral and ethical authority, while Liz Truss shredded the party’s long-fostered reputation for economic competence. By contrast, Sunak resigned from Johnson’s government over the Partygate scandal and foresaw the financial catastrophe of Trussonomics.

As Sunak takes the helm, the Tories have finally got “what they really needed above all” – an “aim and purpose”, wrote O’Grady. “Fixing the economy” will mean “tough choices now, better times ahead. No more chaos and confusion. Simple as that, and endlessly repeated.”

But other commentators pointed out that while Sunak focuses on the economy, many voters will remain focused on his personal wealth, as the cost-of-living crisis worsens. The new Tory leader is the wealthiest MP in Parliament, with a family fortune estimated to be greater than that of the King.

While Sunak did “improve and sharpen up his message” during his first, failed bid for the Tory leadership, said the i news site’s Paul Waugh, the long summer campaign “also exposed weaknesses that Labour is sure to exploit mercilessly”.

As Sunak’s “sharp switch from furlough hero to too-little-too-late energy bill helper showed, he’s already found out it’s infinitely easier for a rich man to play Santa than it is to play Scrooge”, Waugh continued. And “his wife’s non-dom status” and “botched” plan to hike National Insurance, along with “his job as a former Goldman Sachs analyst and his decision to send his children to elite public schools”, all provide “fertile attack areas for Labour which can be neatly summed up as “the ‘4 Ts’ – technocracy, tax, tycoonery and treachery”.

Sunak’s personality has also come under attack by the opposition. “The most common word that Labour figures use to describe the chancellor is ‘vain’,” said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman earlier this year. The opposition “believe he makes political miscalculations” because he is “self-regarding, inexperienced and sensitive”, Rea wrote.

The Tories, turn, are likely to counterattack by pointing to Labour’s history of all-white, all-male leadership. The Conservatives “have left Labour in the dust on diversity”, said The Times’s social affairs editor James Beal, by assembling “the most diverse senior team in British political history” headed by the country’s first ethic-minority PM

“Much will depend upon how Labour choose to tackle our new prime minister,” said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. “It would only take one undisciplined Labour MP to disparage Sunak’s ethnicity as ‘superficial’ or ‘fake’ on account of his personal wealth and political opinions to remind voters of how committed to the rabbit hole of identity politics Labour is these days.”

What next?

With Britain engulfed in political and economic crisis, his party divided and pressure growing to call a general election, Sunak needs to hit the ground running (to paraphrase his predecessor) in order to win back public support.

All eyes will be on who Sunak appoints to his top team in a re-shuffle that is expected to bring together his own supporters with backers of Johnson and defeated leadership contender Penny Mordaunt. Whether Jeremy Hunt remains as chancellor ahead of next Monday’s much-anticipated fiscal statement may offer insights into how Sunak will try to revive the economy and stabilise the markets.

Tomorrow’s PMQs should also provide a flavour of how Sunak intends to tackle his main Labour rival.

“Inside the opposition leader’s office, Sunak is widely thought to be beatable,” said Politico’s Esther Webber. One such insider reportedly pointed out that “this is the man who spent the summer being embarrassed and outperformed” by Truss.

But Harris cautioned in The Telegraph that while Starmer may be “tempted” to try to embarrass Sunak over his personal wealth, the riches of the PM and his family are “land mines” that Labour “must be very wary of stepping on”. Instead, “Labour needs to be seen as a party of aspiration, and not just for those at the bottom of the economic pile”.

According to Webber, an unnamed “Labour MP suggested the party would now focus on the Conservatives’ tarnished brand and their 12-year record in power rather than on specific individuals in the next election campaign, hammering them on the fall in many people’s living standards and on struggling transport and health services.”

As the two leaders prepared to go head-to-head in the Commons, Webber concluded that “Sunak may need to up his game again for the challenges ahead”.