It has been a year like no other in UK history. Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96, after 70 of her on the throne, while a state of both political and economic crisis has been maintained that has shaken the nation without precedent. Strikes have been another factor that has shaken the government.
The forced resignation of Boris Johnson in July, after a long list of scandals, devastated the political stability of the country and the credibility of the figure of the prime minister.
Johnson, incidentally, sank a little more the popularity of his party, the Conservatives, which has been in power for 12 years.
To continue with the conservative agenda, Liz Truss was elected, the third woman to become Prime Minister and the shortest in the country’s history, with just 44 days in office.
Truss, faithful to the ‘Tory’ ideological manifesto, presented a financial plan that proposed a 180 degree turn for the economy. It included, among other things, a tax cut, the largest in the last 50 years. Markets immediately panicked and would only fully recover from there with the predictable resignation of the prime minister.
The election of the third ‘Tory’ prime minister of 2022 was not expected. The Conservative bubble was beginning to disintegrate as the opposition Labor Party began to close behind in the polls, becoming a frontrunner for the first time in several years in the 2024 general election.
After a short process, Rishi Sunak was proclaimed among his fellow supporters. Since the summer season, he had been the favorite to replace Johnson and time proved him right and a chance for revenge. Months before, he had warned that Truss’s financial plan would bring about a crisis. He was not wrong and he did not miss the opportunity to break ties with his predecessors.
Sunak spoke of correcting mistakes and governing neatly. Messages with which he opened the doors of Downing Street and that surely permeated both Truss and Johnson.
However, the priority of recovering credibility in domestic politics has been displaced by urgent fires like the crisis in the cost of living, while more strikes from different sectors threaten to paralyze the country, demanding wage increases due to skyrocketing inflation.
“This has been a year like no other in British politics. It seems that it is another chapter of the turmoil in the ruling Conservative Party after Brexit ”, explains to France 24 the expert of the Institute for Government, Jill Rutter.
On the other hand, 2022 reveals the deterioration and wear and tear of British politics and the inability of the Conservative Party to connect with the priorities and needs of the rest of the country, beyond those who vote for them.
The Brexit effect spreads
Since June 2016, much of what is happening in the UK is directly or indirectly linked to the exit from the European Union, which materialized in January 2020.
The current crisis in British politics is a consequence of this divorce. It seems that the Conservative governments have not found the way to fulfill the promises of Brexit.
“The problem is that we did not agree on what the decision meant. We have had a result, leaving the European Union, but we were not clear why, and since then we have been discussing it, as well as what kind of country we want to be and what our position in the world should be”, affirms the professor of politics from the University of Surrey, Simon Usherwood.
The effects of Brexit are many and varied. Shortage of labor in various sectors, increase in the prices of fresh food brought from Europe, more bureaucracy and paperwork for both imports and exports.
According to the London School of Economics’ Center for Economic Performance, Brexit increased British household food bills by £210 ($257) through 2021.
By the way, political tension has increased in Northern Ireland, the British region that remains within the Single Market and Customs System of the EU to avoid the return of physical borders that put the 1998 Peace Agreement at risk. 2023 there will surely be local elections in that region. The parties, the republicans of Sinn Fein and the unionists of the DUP, did not reach an agreement to form a regional government. Unionists refuse to do so until the Northern Ireland protocol is amended.
Rishi Sunak has been much more conciliatory towards Europe than his predecessors. He knows that only Brussels can guarantee those changes that return political stability to that troubled area.
“Finding a way to get Brexit done and bringing that coalition together was why the Conservative Party turned to someone as flawed as Boris Johnson when Theresa May came to the end of the road, but those flaws ultimately undid him,” explains Jill Rutter, who adds that “Liz Truss, who had opportunistically embraced Brexit, despite campaigning in favor of staying, was elected on the promise of delivering Brexit benefits, but ran into a wall of market reality.”
This reality also occurs in that the United Kingdom today is a different country and with many other priorities than it was in 2016, when the divorce won.
Managing to save the economy in recession in the context of a global financial crisis that affects almost the entire population is the great urgency, as well as controlling inflation that is breaking records in 40 years and the increase in energy prices.
In December there was hardly a single day without a strike from a different sector.
Rishi Sunak, the third prime minister of 2022
He is the first prime minister of Indian origin, as well as the youngest in modern history, at just 42, and the first billionaire and favorite to succeed Johnson, even from his years as finance minister.
Among his government promises is that of uniting the country in the midst of the crisis and his party, an issue that is a chimera, precisely because within the conservatives there are various factions around the type of relationship that should be had with Europe.
But the tie with Europe is not the only divisive factor. That favoritism that has accompanied Sunak has not translated, so far, into relief. Professor Usherwood points out that the premier is in a “weak position in his party”, ready to riot when he needs it.
This position and perception of weakness of the Sunak Government has been transferred to the population due to the countless strikes in recent months that are putting the executive in check, especially in essential sectors such as trains.
This is also seen as a disadvantage of the ‘Tories’ compared to Labor, who are closing the distance and are getting closer to winning the government.
“As much of a stabilizing force as he is, (Sunak) doesn’t seem like someone who’s going to have a big economic growth agenda,” Usherwood says.
2023 arrives with many challenges and urgent issues, but with only one priority, especially for families who will have to decide between eating or heating their homes in a winter that has only just begun.
