Six reasons to be optimistic about a Rishi Sunak premiership

For the last few days and weeks, the political news from Britain has been unremittingly grim. But Rishi Sunak in No10 represents a new start - but before he starts, it is worth considering the case for optimism for his premiership. Here goes:-

• At a time when market-literacy is at a premium, we’ll have the most market-literate PM in history. Sunak has a clearer grasp of finance than anyone to sit in No. 10 or No. 11. Gordon Brown was regarded as a details man because he read original academic papers. Sunak, a Goldman Sachs alumni, had a Bloomberg terminal on his desk to follow the metrics from which such papers are drawn. Treasury officials make the same joke about him: no matter how detailed the briefing, he was more on top of the issue than they are. We need that right now.
• Sunak was ill-suited to campaigning because he likes to under-promise and over-deliver. But we also need a bit of that after unfulfilled hype of recent months.
• Sunak genuinely fought lockdown, almost alone in the cabinet. He lost, but at least he fought – and gave a candid interview to The Spectator about that fight. No one else would have given an interview like that because no one else fought it. He has proven his ability to stage, if necessary, a one-man fight against wrong received wisdom He not only has the mental tools to defy a false orthodoxy but the willingness to use those tools. We need that now.
• As I argued in last week’s Daily Telegraph, he may make fewer tax hikes than Jeremy Hunt was planning for in his (hopefully soon-to-be-cancelled) 31 October Halloween budget. Hunt was putting together a fiscal tightening package of some 1.4 per cent of GDP out of a panicked sense of what 'the markets' wants. In fact, neither Hunt nor Liz Truss had a clue what the markets want - so were in danger of a panicked over-reaction. Sunak won’t treat the markets like a Roman god who demands sacrifices. He understands it’s a matter of reassurance through competence. That can be done without too many tax hikes that deepen a recession and make the whole problem worse.
• Sunak, while no showman, is organisationally highly competent: the opposite of blustering Boris and accident-prone Truss. He actually thinks through government policies, implementation and likely reaction. Unusually for a Chancellor, he pioneered new schemes (furlough, eat out to help out) which were operational successes (even if you disagree with them). U-turns are not his style.
• Sunak gets the need for welfare reform. In the end, he realised his furlough scheme backfired as the over-50s weren't coming back to work, blowing a massive hole in the labour market and slowing growth. Truss was still talking the lowest employment in 40 years: that’s a fake figure only valid if you ignore various other forms of unemployment. All included, 13 per cent of working-age Brits are claiming out-of-work benefits in a country with near-record levels of job vacancies: Sunak realises this is a scandal. Whether he’ll push through the radical welfare reform needed to remedy this is another question but at least he knows the problem.

One thing I don’t mention above: if Sunak does become PM, he’ll be the first non-white leader in Britain. But it won’t be an Obama moment because Britain is not obsessed about race, which is one of the best things about this country. Race has not been an issue in his long campaign; Britain doesn't think in such terms. Not anymore. Diwali, a five-day festival of light for Hindus and Sikhs, started on Saturday. It's quite conceivable that Sunak, a practising Hindu, will soon be lighting candles for Diwali outside No. 10 (as he did outside No11) sending a powerful message about Britain’s status as Europe’s most successful melting pot. And a message about the success of the project of the United Kingdom. If he does end up lighting those candles, it's worth asking: in how many countries would such a scene be possible? We live in amazing country, and now and again there are moments where it's okay to remind ourselves of that.

Now, does all of the above mean I think his premiership will be a triumph and a Tory victory guaranteed? No: he has drawbacks too. His odd acceptance speech showcases his presentational issues. I opposed his windfall taxes and his decision to renege on the manifesto pledge of no more National Insurance tax rises. During the summer campaign, he seemed to convey a 'we're doomed' fatalism that seemed inconsistent with the more radical, orthodoxy-defying figure I had thought him to be. Financiers who become politicians often have a slideshow-presentation mode that asserts itself at awkward moments. Most choices ahead of him are awful ones.

He could be transformational, or a flop. But any version of Rishi would be a vast improvement on the political muppet show of recent weeks - upon which the curtain has finally come down.