As strikes abound, Rishi Sunak must go against his political instincts

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Good morning. The Royal College of Nursing will go on strike for the first time in its 106-year history. Some thoughts on that in today’s note, plus I try to answer your Gavin Williamson-related questions.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenkb and please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

Strike while the RCN’s hot

Royal College of Nursing members will walk out across 176 workplaces, including at many of the biggest hospitals in the United Kingdom. The action is expected to begin before Christmas.

The policy backdrop isn’t all that complicated. The public sector pay freeze meant that even before UK inflation sharply increased, nurses, as with all UK public sector pay workers, faced sharp real terms pay cuts. As a consequence, they are striking for higher pay.

If you don’t like your pay you have two options: you can take industrial action or get another job. With that in mind, even if the UK government were able to bring a negotiated end to these strikes without a big pay rise for nurses and other public sector workers, sooner or later they will have to sign off on further wages just to keep hospitals and other vital public services running.

That policy reality — and the political difficulties of further cuts — is why I think Rishi Sunak’s government will eventually end up delivering something which looks an awful lot like the Budget which Sunak delivered under Boris Johnson: a big increase in taxes across the board and not just for “the rich”. Plus a big increase in real terms spending, too.

Then, if you’re Sunak, you hope that there is a path to re-election that runs through saying “I’ve raised taxes because it’s the responsible thing to do, but we all know that Labour will keep raising taxes and spending more because that’s what it does”. You also hope that all those voter anxieties about past Labour governments (not to mention Labour oppositions past) see them home. Couple that with a serious programme to improve the quality of the UK’s public services and some proper reforms to the shape of our tax system, our planning system and so forth and you can sketch out an agenda for another term of Conservative power that might actually accomplish something.

Sir Keir Starmer and his inner circle are very worried about that possibility. They are extremely preoccupied by avoiding and neutralising what Robert Shrimsley dubs “the progressive penalty” in his column this week:

While the right rarely has to prove its credentials on patriotism, law and order or being careful with public money, the left is expected to offer a higher degree of reassurance. This is even more true for a party which so recently succumbed to Corbynism.

The problem for Sunak with this path is twofold. The first is that raising taxes in this way runs against his own political instincts and desires. His final Budget was the product of the uneasy alliance between him and Boris Johnson rather than an expression of his own will. He doesn’t want to be the guy who increases spending and increases tax. His preferred path to fiscal sustainability runs through spending cuts.

But the second and bigger problem is that the Conservative party as a whole really doesn’t want to do that either. The allergic reaction among both MPs and activists to Sunak’s last Budget led to his defeat in the first 2022 leadership election. The prime minister faces a set of unlovely choices: further strikes and labour shortages in the public services, internal rows over spending cuts, internal rows about tax rises, or internal rows about tax rises and spending cuts.

The politics of this aren’t straightforward for Labour, either. Firstly that “progressive penalty” means it is nervous about talking too much about taxes for fear that those old, old worries about the Labour party’s record will keep it out of office.

But the other problem for Labour comes courtesy of devolution. There is a Labour government in Wales. In 2017, it passed the Trade Union (Wales) Act, which partially overturned some of the barriers to industrial action in “important public services” that the UK government had erected across the UK, including the 40 per cent support threshold for strike ballots.

It is likely, therefore, that there will be more strikes in Labour-run Wales than in either Conservative England or the SNP’s Scotland. Expect the steady drumbeat of political debate from now until the next election to be a Labour politician saying that these strikes and public service pressures are the product of Conservative economic choices. In response, a Tory politician will say there are more strikes in Labour Wales than the rest of the UK, and that the price of a Labour vote come election time is more strikes and more tax rises.

Where there’s a Williamson, there’s a way

Why on earth did Rishi Sunak appoint Gavin Williamson in the first place? This is a man who has been given two important Cabinet posts — Defence and Education — and has been ignominiously sacked from both, strongly suggesting that he is deficient in both integrity and competence.

But Sunak seems to have found his elevation so important that he brought him back into the Cabinet even though there wasn’t really a job for him. What evidence is there that Williamson is good at anything? And what does it even matter?

A large number of you asked this question or some variation thereof. (Apologies for smooshing them all together like this.)

The answer to “why did Rishi Sunak appoint this guy? and “why on earth does this matter?” are closely linked. Sunak appointed Gavin Williamson to help him win votes in the House of Commons. Essentially, his real job was co-chief whip alongside Simon Hart. (Hart was the velvet glove, Williamson the iron fist.)

Williamson’s departure matters because it is an indication that Sunak may fail to win those votes and that there is a small, but real chance (say, 15 per cent) we may end up with a general election sooner rather than later.

What evidence is there that Williamson is actually any good at anything? Nick Timothy, one of Theresa May’s former aides, makes the good point over on Twitter that there’s a reason why David Cameron wanted to keep Williamson as his parliamentary private secretary, May wanted him as chief whip, and that both Boris Johnson and Sunak wanted him on their campaign teams. Yes, he really was good at the parliamentary management stuff.

There’s an important “but” here, though, which is that ultimately, Williamson’s shortcomings as a parliamentary manager can also be seen in the manner of his downfall. His own former deputy came out of retirement to help bury him! That being said, Williamson really was and is good at the political management stuff, and Sunak may well struggle without him.

Now try this

I’m off tomorrow for my wedding anniversary. This space frequently has restaurant recommendations and (understandably) you often ask for one outside London. I will go one better and recommend 100. Something that brings me a huge amount of additional value is the AA’s Restaurant Guide. In its digital form, the smartphone app is much better and easier to use than the Michelin one.

In addition, when you want to look lovingly into your partner’s eyes/eke out the remaining morsels of small talk left, the AA Restaurant Guide has a higher ratio of “places that will just leave you alone to enjoy your wine in your own damn time”, and is fantastic at finding excellent places at a variety of prices.

Anyway, I’ll be back on Monday — Georgina is minding the shop alone tomorrow. Please be gentle and have a wonderful weekend, however you spend it.

Top stories today

• Shrinking workforce | The UK is set to be the only country in the developed world with employment still below its pre-pandemic level at the start of 2023, according to a new analysis.

• Maxi mayhem | What is the UK fiscal hole and what has contributed to it? Chris Giles explains the context behind Jeremy Hunt’s predicted package of tax rises and spending cuts — set to be worth about £55bn a year. “Since the Treasury’s Spring Statement in March, almost everything that could go wrong has done so,” he writes.

• No hurry Heaton-Harris | London is pushing back a deadline to hold elections in Northern Ireland in the hope that the UK and EU can resolve a row over post-Brexit trade rules before next Easter. Chris Heaton-Harris, UK secretary of state for Northern Ireland, told the Financial Times he had delayed his legal duty to call fresh elections in order to “clear some time and space for talks”.

• Sunak under fire at PMQs | Speaking at prime minister’s questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described Williamson as a “cartoon bully with a pet spider” who had been enabled by Sunak. Asked by Starmer if he regretted giving Williamson a job, Sunak said: “I obviously regret appointing someone who has had to resign in these circumstances.”

• Bully claims | The Guardian has two sources claiming the prime minister had been alerted to Williamson’s “credible and substantiated bad behaviour” while defence secretary when he drew up his cabinet.

• Fiscal drag saving | Rishi Sunak’s decision to freeze UK income tax allowances and thresholds is on track to raise £30bn a year by 2026 because of the impact of high inflation, according to a leading think-tank.

• Who are the swing voters? | In their new research paper, Ben Farrer and Josh Zingher of openDemocracy dig into voters’ data from 36 years of elections. “From the perspective of the parties, both Labour and the Conservatives would do well to consider whether they are appealing to the demographic groups of the future or the demographic groups of the past.”