Sunak: golden opportunity missed or playing the long game?

On the face of it, Rishi Sunak looks like the big loser from the Cummings affair over the past few days. He has fluffed the opportunity of a lifetime to use his untouchable position to display serious political weight and to position himself a long way ahead of other contenders in the next Tory leadership election. He has enjoyed (and, to be fair, still probably enjoys, albeit in diminished form) the Lady Bracknell advantage in the political power stakes. To lose one Chancellor of the Exchequer is bad luck, to lose two would be careless. His one disadvantage at the time of his sudden and unexpected elevation four months ago is that he could have been portrayed as the poodle of Dominic Cummings whose machinations over political advisers ousted Sajid Javid and vaulted Sunak into the top spot. His obvious strategy was to stay focused on the nuts and bolts of the Treasury job and burnish his reputation as the one senior Cabinet minister on top of his brief, whilst awaiting an opportunity to flex his muscles and show that he was not a Cummings poodle.

That opportunity came four days ago. And has now gone. Whether or not Johnson and Cummings succeed in staring down the Durham story until it recedes from the media headlights and public awareness, there can be little doubt that a Cummings resignation this week known to have been forced by an ultimatum from Sunak would have played brilliantly with almost every part of public and political opinion, outside the tight circle of Johnson’s immediate aides. That opportunity has now evaporated with the tame, near-identical on-message statements from Sunak and his fellow members of the inner cabinet running the Covid crisis management.

It would have been a very brave move. The Tory party tends not to reward politicians who openly plunge the knife into the leader. Michael Heseltine being the prime example. A case of ingratitude against the leader who had made his career (for Johnson would have been the big loser from a Sunak-driven resignation by Cummings) might well have been spun successfully to the right wing media. And Johnson remains the man whose unique brand of populism dragged the Tories back from imminent implosion a year ago to an 80-seat majority in December.

So perhaps Rishi Sunak was wise to stay his hand on this occasion. The arrogance of Cummings may yet provide another opportunity for him to show his political mettle and weight. And that arrogance is only likely to increase if he and Johnson do manage to stare down the story. The only trouble for Sunak is that his fresh pair of hands are now sullied in the spin doctor’s dirt and, if the post-lockdown phase were to be undermined by negative public reaction to the Cummings episode (such as people feeling freer to flout the guidelines more overtly), then Sunak will share in the blame for that. On balance, I still think that he would have emerged stronger from a decisive blow to remove Cummings whilst declaring unstinted loyalty to Johnson himself. Plunging a dagger into the political adviser is not the same as regicide.