Rishi Sunak: An open letter from The Yorkshire Post to our new Prime Minister

As the country’s first British Indian and Hindu Prime Minister, you have demonstrated that the UK’s highest political office can be held by people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. Your rise to Prime Minister is also a source of local pride, as the first British PM to hold the post while representing a Yorkshire constituency.

But as you will no doubt be aware, the circumstances of your arrival at 10 Downing Street this week highlight the immense scale of the challenge you will face as Prime Minister.

It was just seven weeks ago that this newspaper published a similar letter welcoming your predecessor Liz Truss to the same post after she had won the leadership election against you.

Since that moment, Ms Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng made an already difficult economic situation for the country considerably worse - a situation leading to their rapid political downfalls and your selection by Tory MPs as her replacement. But far more than the political game of snake and ladders, what the disastrous Mini Budget did was to add to the economic anxiety of millions, reduce the value of the pound, increase the cost of Government borrowing and leave a multi-billion pound black hole for spending on the nation’s already creaking public services.

Ms Truss’s brief but fateful time in office also raised global questions about the UK’s financial probity and in this country further tarnished the Conservative Party’s reputation - already damaged by the repeated questions of morality that bedevilled Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister and ultimately led his own ministers and MPs to decide en masse that he was unfit for office. That dozens of your colleagues then saw fit to attempt to reimpose Mr Johnson as Prime Minister just weeks after he was forced to resign speaks volumes about a widespread lack of political nous and character judgement within the nation’s governing party.

In that context, it is little surprise you come to office at a point where the Conservatives are far behind the polls and currently appear to have little prospect of winning the next election, whenever it may take place. The harsh reality is that many people are asking the question whether life in this country has improved under the Tory party and its various leaders over the past 12 years and are concluding the answer at this present moment in time is a resounding no.

Turning that around while also placing the public finances on a sustainable footing will be no simple task.

The question of your precise policy programme remains very much a live one following the rush to replace Ms Truss and the lack of any interview or detailed public statement from yourselves. While your plans were set out over the summer during the lengthy leadership contest against the then-Foreign Secretary, the economic context in which you are now making decisions has changed markedly as a result of the Mini-Budget.

Equally, the circumstances of your arrival in office in which you were elected unopposed by MPs raises difficult questions of democratic legitimacy. Not only did the general public get no say, but neither did Conservative Party members who opted against your leadership just a few weeks ago.

Many of them may now rue that decision, but it is a fact that proposition has ultimately not been put to the test and will hang over the decisions that you now have to make.

The challenge is a great one but one you have opted to take on.

There are good reasons to hope you can deliver.

Firstly, you warned of the dangers of Liz Truss’s economic plans and forecast accurately what would happen if they were enacted. Clearing up the mess while protecting people and businesses during the cost-of-living plight and a looming recession will not be a simple task but it is one that requires expert knowledge, analytical thinking, a cool head in a crisis and most importantly, compassion. These are qualities which were required during your baptism of fire as Chancellor at the start of the Covid pandemic and they will be required again.

You have promised to govern with “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government” - something that should be a given but has been lacking for far too long. Nevertheless, it is an ambition that can and must be delivered upon.

Given the increasingly rapid attrition rate in the shelf-life of Prime Ministers, you will forgive us for passing on some of the same advice we passed on to Ms Truss just a few short weeks ago.

The people of this country are fed up of being taken for fools: ordinary men and women up and down the country feel powerless, voiceless and in many cases hopeless. Yes, even hope in some communities has been taken away. We do not believe the Westminster elite and its caravan of Whitehall sycophants cares a jot about we who live and work in the regions. ‘Levelling Up’ to date has proved a unicorn policy that exists only in the rhetoric of those who wish to deceive us. Tokenist policies at best, central government on the Levelling Up scorecard - upon which so many people’s life chances depend - has hitherto not landed a blow.

That is why we are calling on you, Prime Minister, to entrust the Levelling Up policy to the very regions it purports to serve. Every challenge the nation faces can be made more easily surmountable if you succeed with devolution proper. By engaging energetic, capable, accountable leaders at a local level across the country, Mr Sunak, you have in your hands the opportunity to leave a Premier’s legacy like no other.

In just seven years, you have risen from being elected as an MP to the office of Prime Minister. Now it is incumbent to make the moment count.