(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Will Rishi die on his immigration hill? [1] [] Date: 2024-02 Sunak has tried out a number of different images since he became prime minister in October 2022. He’s been the safe pair of hands steadying the ship, the ‘change candidate’ ready to confront old legacies, and even the conciliator and continuity candidate. None of these versions of “the real Rishi” landed particularly favourably, perhaps because they have all been dominated by the same message: this PM, more than anything else, will prove himself to voters through his hostility to migrants. The reason for this, we can only assume, is that he has judged whipping up anger around migration to be a cheaper, easier and quicker route to votes than improving the economy or unclogging the NHS. And he needed speed. As the third Tory prime minister of this term, Sunak never had a lot of time on his side. But all those changes in self-presentation were also opportunities to change tack. He could see the Rwanda plan wasn’t going well, and if he hadn’t been blinded by an obsession with migration he could have switched to other stories that made his (and the Tories’) many failures at least less obvious. Inflation has dropped and, despite the government having little to do with it, Sunak had a chance of pitching the Tories as the party of recovery. The Autumn Statement was another chance to sell economic success, and Hunt gave it a go by presenting tax cuts paid for by future spending cuts to public services as another win. But each time, within days, sometimes even hours, another story of chaos at the Home Office drowned out every other conversation. It’s all in the sell Sunak appears to have spent his first year as prime minister assuming he would get away with running historically high rates of net immigration while loudly shouting about bringing numbers down. Doing so was an unnecessary act of self-harm. He would have likely been fine if he had given consistency a shot and levelled with the public about the needs of the economy and the health and care sector. Both are more important to voters than the number of immigrants. Similarly, high immigration numbers would have been much less damaging if he had presented them as part of his solution to the problem – by bringing in taxation, billions in foreign student contributions, needed labour – rather suggesting they’re an aberration. Or, worse, claiming that dropping them is his plan for fixing the economy. Nobody trusts the government on immigration, not because everybody wants the same thing but because it consistently feels like amateur hour. It claims to want low numbers, achieves the opposite, and seems surprised. Cruelty as a vocation More surprising still is Sunak’s choice to pin his entire career to the success or failure of the Rwanda deal. Let’s not forget: Priti Patel announced this half-baked distraction deal when she was home secretary in Boris Johnson’s government. Experts on both sides of the debate warned it was likely doomed from the start, and that it would have little impact on irregular migration if it ever got off the ground. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/will-rishi-die-on-his-immigration-hill-general-election-conservatives/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/