Rishi Sunak has already tried almost everything to try to stop the disaster that the polls predict for the Conservative Party. The fear card remained, and the British Prime Minister decided to play it fully this Monday, in a speech that showed his electoral strategy until next autumn, when the polls are scheduled to be called. “Do you think the country would be less safe under a Keir Starmer Government? [el líder del Partido Laborista]?”, BBC political correspondent Chris Mason asked him point-blank, expecting the classic blunt answer that politicians usually use to avoid ending up caught in a trap. “In short, yes, I do,” Sunak responded.
Downing Street had given the media, hours before the speech, the juiciest fragments of an almost apocalyptic vision of the future with which the conservative candidate has sought to set the tone for the electoral battle of the coming months: “I have a deep feeling of urgency, because I believe that more things are going to change in the next five years than have changed in the last 30. I believe that the coming years are going to be the most dangerous, although also the ones with the greatest capacity for transformation that this country has ever known. country,” Sunak announced in a speech prepared at the London headquarters of Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank focused on foreign and defense policy.
Sunak, 44 years old and with a reputation as a technocrat obsessed with new advances, wants to present to the public the image of a young man who knows his time against a rival, Keir Starmer, 61, who until recently supported the anti-war and anti-NATO policies of his predecessor in office, Jeremy Corbyn. “People want to make sure that whoever is in charge knows the dangers we face. Only if you understand what is happening, can you get people to trust you to guarantee their safety,” the prime minister said.
When enunciating the threats that, according to him, present a bleak future, Sunak has made a mix of certain dangers, exaggerated dangers and invented dangers from a clearly ideological bias. “A growing number of authoritarian states, such as Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, are cooperating to undermine our values and principles,” he warned.
Along with the current wars – Ukraine, Gaza or the different conflicts on the African continent – Sunak has included the migratory phenomenon – “we must protect ourselves against illegal immigration,” he warned -, the alleged anti-Semitism of the demonstrations in favor of Palestine, the cultural war between conservatism and the trans movement, or even Scotland’s independence aspirations.
Risks and opportunities
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Since the beginning of his political career, Sunak has earned a reputation for geek, as they call technology obsessives. And in the same way that he set up an international conference last year in Bletchley Park, north of London, to avert the risks of Artificial Intelligence, he is able to present it as the solution to boost the ailing British economy, and the opportunity to give a a patina of novelty to his failed mandate and 14 years of conservative governments.
“Despite having been 14 years old [el tiempo pasado hasta ahora en la oposición] With nothing to do but think about the future, the Labor Party has nothing to say about it. “He has no plans to protect our borders, ensure our energy independence or boost our economy,” Sunak attacked his rivals.
The Labor leader has found his best asset in pointing out the prime minister’s continuous shifts in strategy, which reveal, according to him, the desperation of the conservatives, mired “in chaos and division.” Starmer, who does not fail to remember his time at the head of the Crown Prosecution Service to highlight his credentials in matters of security, has assured, in his response to Sunak, that the refounded Labor party that has emerged under his command “always puts the country ahead of the game.”
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