Twelve months since Boris Johnson announced his resignation, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is courting disaster in coming electoral tests and struggling to honour his flagship policy promises.
In January, Sunak sought to draw a line under a long period of chaos under Johnson and his short-lived successor Liz Truss, by making five pledges to increasingly disaffected voters.
The headline pledges were to halve sky-high inflation and to stop boatloads of migrants crossing the Channel from northern France.
But at just under 10 percent, inflation remains sticky. Rising interest rates have, according to the opposition Labour party, created a “Tory mortgage bombshell” for millions of hard-pressed home owners.
And courts have rejected the Conservative government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda. “Those were his two signature pledges.
So he’s in trouble,” said Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London and author of a new book on Tory infighting since Brexit.
“The economy seems to be out of his control at the moment. Any solution to the small boats situation seems to be a long way off too,” he told AFP.__Daily Times
