Rishi Sunak's real challenge as PM is not economic or political but social

Sunak has to govern a fractious and self-indulgent mob, which has resulted from a near-total breakdown of authority of all sorts

First, the election, and then the resignation, of and the election of Rishi Sunak in her place has led to a huge interest in British politics. Sunak isn't white. And everyone thinks Britain is passing through its first political, economic and social crisis.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which is that Britain has always been one of the most politically turbulent countries in the world. It has been like a pitcher, which is motionless because it is very heavy, but inside which, the water is always simmering and sometimes roiling.

I could go back as many as 525 years, but that would need a monograph. Here let me confine myself to just the last 100 years when very few decades could be said to have been politically calm.

Liz Truss 

The British long ago accepted specific political arrangements like monarchy, parliament and the rule of law, though, until 1715, they weren't even sure of these things.

But after all that came to be accepted entirely, the majority of the English, if not the rest of the British, have turned their attention to constant wrangling leading to continual jockeying for power by different groups.

This has caused persistent political instability wherein governments have either come and gone in quick succession or, if they have managed to serve the full term, they have polarised the country into two bitterly opposed and savagely intolerant parts.

The English have even been grouped into three parts: when in the early 1900s, the Liberal party — much like AAP in India now — first gained ground. It lasted around 30 years as a political force and vanished because no one knew what it stood for. But this didn't end the fighting.

So while the different groups struggled for power, prime ministers came and went. As in Stanley Baldwin's case in the early 1920s, the same prime minister came and went three times in quick succession.

The English pretend that the inter-war years were stable, but that is not true. Barring 1924-29, they were so unstable that they kept forming NDA or UPA-type coalitions. They called them "national governments".

But these governments were neither fish nor fowl, and Hitler took advantage of the situation. For Britain, the consequences of this politics would have been calamitous. But its vast empire, India mainly, bore 90 per cent of the cost of the political mismanagement.

The period from 1960 to 1980 was equally tumultuous. By then, Britain had only two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour. The polarisation was such that, once again, there was instability, both political and economic.

Ideologically, one side was with the Americans, and the other was with the Russians. The impact of the Cold War was thus palpable in British politics, and they fought each other even more viciously.

It was not till 1979 that the people, fed up with all the political nonsense, gave Margaret Thatcher a large majority and kept her there till 1990. It was only after this that Britain became politically stable.

Ironically, the Labour Party became like the Conservative party before Mrs Thatcher. The Conservatives retired hurt for almost the next decade and a half.

But the natives have always been a restless lot. So even as politically and economically, Britain was becoming stabler, it started to simmer socially. Things came to a head around 2017 with the "woke" movement, which has been captured by the Left — near, middle and far.

Overall, the consequence is a near-total breakdown of authority of all kinds. Mr Sunak has, therefore, to govern a fractious and self-indulgent mob.

That's why his biggest challenge is not economic as people think or political as they fear. It is social.