UK is failing to heed Rory Stewart's warning about the choice between fairy tales and the politics of reality – Ian Johnston

After the demise of arch-fantasists Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak has embraced two populist policies that are at odds with reality in a desperate bid to shore up the Conservative base

In 2019, as he stood to become Conservative leader, Rory Stewart gave a speech in which he suggested the UK faced a “choice between fairy stories and the politics of reality”. Within months, he found himself expelled from the Westminster party over his opposition to a no-deal Brexit by the winner of that contest and then out of parliament entirely.

After travelling from within touching distance of becoming Prime Minister to the abrupt end of his Westminster career in such a short time, Stewart may now feel aggrieved by the reality of politics. In 2019, the Conservative party and then the country chose to put their faith in that great teller of fairy tales, Boris Johnson.

While Johnson did “get Brexit done”, the pre-referendum talk of building a new Jerusalem – with access to the EU’s single market preserved, a stronger NHS, lower taxes, higher wages, lower fuel bills, and even smaller class sizes – evaporated, under the cover of Covid. Johnson’s eventual downfall over repeated lies gave such wild claims a new context, but the Conservative party then chose another magical thinker, Liz Truss, who waved her broken tax-cutting wand and managed to raise everyone’s mortgage repayments instead.

After the failure of Rory Stewart's attempt to become Prime Minister in 2019, he found himself expelled from the Conservative party within months (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Sunak’s fantasy politics

Rishi Sunak initially seemed to promise a return to “the politics of reality” but has instead embraced two fantasies as part of an increasingly desperate bid to shore up the Conservatives’ crumbling base. Both risk causing serious, long-term damage to the UK economy and have – thank goodness – failed to stem the party’s slide in the polls.

Get our weekly opinion newsletter for expert analysis from The Scotsman’s team of columnists

The first is his stance on immigration, particularly the eye-wateringly expensive plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. As Tim Montgomerie, who set up the Conservative Home website and worked as a special adviser to Johnson, recently pointed out, if a flight ever actually takes off, there may never be a day when the number of people flown to Rwanda is greater than the number of people crossing the English Channel. Voters are going to notice and then start wondering whether the estimated cost of about half a billion pounds is money well spent. The ‘optics’, as they say, are terrible.

Perhaps shamed by this fiasco, Sunak is also trying to clamp down on immigration by people with work visas. But this is putting the cart before the horse. Choking off a supply of workers to fill vacancies before developing an alternative source – for example, by helping the large number of economically inactive and long-term sick people get back to work – is monumentally stupid. Unfilled vacancies eventually disappear and our economy will contract. It’s a recipe for national decline.

Sunak’s second fantasy is that climate change doesn’t need to be taken seriously, targets can be watered down and action delayed, and the UK can meet its climate commitments while “maxing out” its oil and gas. No, it can’t, this is Johnson-esque ‘cakeism’ and a long-term economic blunder.

As he relates in his book, Politics on the Edge, Stewart tried to tell people the truth about Brexit and climate change. I disagree with some of his views, but his focus on engaging with reality is one that all politicians must have and that voters need to value highly. If we don’t, the end result will be no fairy tale.