Rishi Sunak’s benefit cuts are not intended to get people into work any more than his Rwanda plan is expected to halt the small boats.
Increasingly desperate, he is gambling on divide and rule, playing the oldest dirty trick in the Tory book. He is setting people against each other, inciting those in work to resent those who are not. The signs are that voters will not buy the latest ploy.
Yes, sickness is rising, as is the cost. What people also know is that the NHS is not able to get the ill and injured back on their feet quickly. And all of this is happening on the Conservatives’ watch. So those who inflicted the problems will struggle to convince voters they are the answer.
Nor do most people any longer believe Rwanda will stop the boats. Strap a few poor souls into planes to Kigali this summer and Sunak will enjoy no appreciable electoral bounce. In fact, he might reveal that the Boris Johnson-era scam is another dud if the boats keep on coming.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt floating fresh National Insurance cuts to be paid for by slashing public services or higher borrowing is another sign that the Tories have lost the plot.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves happily asking where the £46billion cost of abolishing NI would come from – NHS? pensions? – resonates with the electorate more readily than more NI reductions when the two previous cuts earned zero political capital.
Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing time after time after time and expecting a different result – applies to Sunak’s strategy to save himself. Labour is wary of sky-high expectations for May 2’s local elections, plus the Blackpool South by-election triggered by Tory sleaze.
Sunak is relying on clinging to poster boy mayors in the West Midlands and Tees Valley, and taking the newly created East Midlands mayoralty, to fight off the Tory rebels who are scheming to replace him in Downing Street with yet another unelected figure.
What the threat of benefit cuts proved is that the Tories have completely run out of new ideas. David Cameron and George Osborne imposed the deepest ever. Back to the future won’t work for the Conservatives. Those days are long gone.
Few people are listening to the Tories and those who are, hate what they are hearing, which is why they yearn for change.
Come the General Election, there will be no fit note for Rishi Sunak and his party. And they will deservedly be heavily sanctioned when most people are worse off than at the last in 2019.