Prime minister urges public to judge him on whether he delivers on new pledges but Labour says most ‘were happening anyway’. This blog is now closed
Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, has issued a statement welcoming the government’s proposal to abandon the privatisation of Channel (without actually putting it in those terms). She says the government should never have floated the plan in the first place, and that it has been a “total distraction” for the broadcaster. She says:
The Conservatives’ vendetta against Channel 4 was always wrong for Britain, growth in our creative economy, and a complete waste of everyone’s time.
Our broadcasting and creative industries lead the world, yet this government has hamstrung them for the last year with the total distraction of Channel 4 privatisation.
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Here is a round-up of the day’s main headlines:
NHS waiting times are too long, Rishi Sunak has admitted in a new year’s speech that saw him urge hospitals not to cancel elective surgeries despite the severe pressure on A&E departments. The prime minister did not say whether people should expect immediate improvement in the health service, after reports of unnecessary deaths due to long ambulance response times and difficulties transferring patients into hospital.
Plans for all pupils in England to study maths up to the age of 18 to tackle innumeracy and better equip them for the modern workplace were also confirmed by the prime minister. Looking forward to the year ahead, Sunak said he knew people were approaching 2023 with “apprehension”, and voiced hopes of restoring optimism. Though he repeated a promise to tackle strike action, Sunak did not give any details about legislation. He promised to say more in “the coming days about our approach”.
The Labour party says the five Rishi Sunak promises will mostly be easy for him to achieve. In a press notice it says the pledges are “all things that were happening anyway; are so easy it would be difficult not to achieve them; or are aimed at fixing problems of the Tories’ own making”.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says the Rishi Sunak speech shows he is “asleep at the wheel” when it comes to dealing with the NHS crisis. In a statement he says: “People will be dismayed that Rishi Sunak still doesn’t have a proper plan to deal with the crisis raging in the NHS. He is asleep at the wheel while patients are treated in hospital corridors and the health service is stretched to breaking point.”
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, says Rishi Sunak’s speech suggests he is “detached from the reality” of what is happening in the NHS. She made the comment in an open letter to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, released to the media.
The former Conservative treasurer Peter Cruddas, a key ally of Boris Johnson, is set to launch a Momentum-style grassroots campaign to overhaul party democracy. The movement – Conservative Democratic Organisation – will have Lord Cruddas as president and aims to give members full say over candidate selections “with minimum interference by CCHQ [Conservative campaign headquarters]”, including the power to deselect MPs. The move has been endorsed by the former home secretary Priti Patel, who is also close to the former prime minister.
Jeremy Hunt has confirmed that he will announce plans to reduce energy support for businesses in the Commons next week, telling industry leaders it was “unsustainably expensive”. The chancellor has told business groups that a package providing support at a “lower level” than current measures would be available to them beyond March, promising to avoid a “cliff edge” in curtailing the subsidy.
The leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, has offered a “cast-iron guarantee” the party will put up a candidate against every Conservative in the next general election, ruling out a 2019-style deal even if the Tories back some of his policies. After a speech to relaunch the party, which was level with the Liberal Democrats in some recent polls, Tice said Reform UK already had 600 candidates in place and would stand in every seat outside Northern Ireland.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for today. Thanks for following along. The UK politics live blog will be back tomorrow morning. Goodnight.
In his first big speech since taking over at No 10, Rishi Sunak promised “no tricks, no ambiguity” as he announced his five promises to reset the government after a difficult year.
The prime minister said he would be focusing on halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting NHS waiting lists, and stopping small-boat crossings to the UK.
“Those are the people’s priorities,” he told his audience. “We will either have achieved them or not. No tricks, no ambiguity. We’re either delivering for you or we’re not.”
Sunak does not have time on his side, with the next general election expected in autumn 2024 and the public struggling with the cost of living, the state of the NHS and strikes.
So his speech was designed primarily to reassure people that, after a catastrophic year for the Tories, he would be a steady hand on the tiller navigating the country through perilous waters.
It was also intended to take on his internal party critics who believe he has ripped up the mandate Boris Johnson won in 2019, that he is a bit too technocratic to win over the red wall, and that he lacks a big vision for the country.
At first glance, staking his premiership on a five-point plan to fix Britain while the country is in the grip of a series of crises, which show little sign of abating, looks like a bold move.
But while Sunak promised to do away with tricks and ambiguity, his success, or failure, appears to depend on exactly that.
Commenting on prime minister Rishi Sunak’s speech earlier today, the Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:By talking about improving the NHS while without even referring to pay, the prime minister is insulting the intelligence of the British people. He knows that the suppression of pay has led to the unsafe and unsustainable staffing levels at the heart of the NHS crisis.
By refusing to enter into pay negotiations that will be essential to any improvements in the health service, he has been responsible for an act of national self-harm. If he wants to take effective action on the NHS, we in the unions remain ready to enter into pay talks at any time.
Meanwhile, the PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said:If Rishi Sunak is serious when he says he values public sector workers, then he would give our members an above-inflation pay rise to help them through the cost-of-living crisis and beyond.
If he is serious about having a reasonable dialogue, then he knows how to get hold of me. I’m waiting for his call. There’s no point in him saying the government’s door is always open when there’s no money on the table.
And if he is serious about stopping small boats crossing the channel, he should provide safe and legal routes for refugees.
To govern in difficult times, a prime minister needs a candid account of problems matched with credible solutions. Rishi Sunak provided neither in what had been billed as a significant policy speech on Wednesday. He referred fleetingly to Covid and the war in Ukraine as causes of the present difficulties, but there was no critical analysis of the way Britain has been governed in recent years.
Of course there wasn’t. To speak honestly about public services would have meant admitting that budget austerity has depleted provision and demoralised staff. To explain the economic malaise, the Tory leader would have had to acknowledge Brexit as national self-sabotage.
That would be a repudiation of positions held sacred by most Conservatives. Even if the prime minister saw the wisdom in such a volte face, his MPs would never permit it. Instead, Mr Sunak set out a plan to tinker in the margins of huge challenges. The smallness of his ambition was padded out with moralising banality.
The core message was a focus on “the people’s priorities” – health, education, antisocial behaviour, economic recovery and cross-Channel migration. This is an unintentional admission that the Tories have wasted 12 years obsessing about the wrong things, or taking bad decisions that make longstanding problems worse.
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