The grown ups are back, but the problems haven’t gone away

Ever since Boris Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street in July 2019, the rest of the world has in turns been amused, worried and on occasions despairing of the UK led by this extraordinary man child who never seemed to have a suit that fitted or owned a comb. Emmanuel Macron’s contempt for him went public and while he joked among world leaders, we knew none of them took him seriously.  Yes, he was first to show solidarity with the Ukrainian President, adopting his favourite sub-Churchillian persona, but they can hardly have been surprised when his own party recognised how toxic he had become even with his own supporters.

And then we gave them Liz.  Not only were her 50 days in office interrupted by the death of our much-loved Queen but her Chancellor’s budget that wasn’t a budget went down with world markets like a cup of cold sick. So much for ideology without statecraft. Abandoning Kwasi Kwarteng and hiring Jeremy Hunt ironically proved to be her undoing.

While she was registering record disapproval ratings, he instantly calmed the markets. The contrast was stark and so after a week of drama when for a few days Johnson threatened a return, Tory MPs elected Rishi Sunak who, together with Hunt, has taken sterling back above where it was before the Kwarteng budget. The sense that the UK has turned a significant corner is palpable. The grown-ups are back. But the problems they face have not gone away.

On the positive side, Sunak’s Cabinet appointments have seen him bring both wings of the party together and, just as significantly, he’s recalled people like Andrew Mitchell to International Development, George Freeman to BEIS, Jesse Norman to Transport, Nick Gibb to Education and, of course, our old friend Michael Gove to DLUHC, all of whom know their briefs and should never have been removed.

Whether re-appointing Suella Braverman to the Home Office during a migrant crisis was wise remains to be seen, but she is loved by the hard right of the party who still hanker after a tougher line on immigration and Sunak needed them on side. Her harsh populist rhetoric may offend some, but she won’t care. She knows that she speaks for many.

That said, as a former minister myself, I know how important it is for your department to like you, and clearly the Home Office as an institution detests her. My suspicion is they’ll find a way to make her position untenable.

With that exception and, of course, that of Sir Gavin Williamson, it’s likely that, amazing as it sounds, we might well have the same Prime Minister and Cabinet by Christmas. While that will be welcome, less welcome will be the Chancellor’s budget announcement on 17 November.

It’s going to be a tough message. He has to find £50bn to start getting the country’s finances on track and we already know this means tax rises rather than cuts, big budget cuts across the board in government and, most controversially, potentially a pay deal for public sector workers of 2% when the cost of living is rising by closer to 10%, which is the rate several trade unions are striking for.

To add insult to injury, residential property is already looking vulnerable as interest rates rise. I don’t have to tell BE News readers what’s likely to happen. Some of us remember the dreadful time when mainly young owners just threw their keys on the agent’s desk and walked out, wiped out, homeless and penniless. Unless something is done about that prospect, and done soon, you can guarantee that for all their hard work, it won’t just be this government that is eviscerated at the next election. Europe’s oldest political party will be reduced to an irrelevance just as the Liberal party was destroyed in 1918. Michael Gove needs to grip this with his Treasury colleagues and find an answer fast.