Sunak marks 100 days as UK Prime Minister as trouble mounts

London (AP) British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has angry unions to his left, fearful Conservative Party lawmakers to the right and center millions of voters he must win over to avoid electoral defeat.

It’s a disheartening situation for Sunak, who will be in office for 100 days on Thursday, more than twice as many as his ill-fated predecessor. Liz Truus. Installed as Conservative leader after Truss’ plans for massive tax cuts panic, Sunak, 42, calmed financial markets and averted economic collapse when he became prime minister on October 25.

Britain’s youngest leader for two centuries – and it is first prime minister of South Asian descent – has pledged to tame rising inflation, grow the sluggish economy, ease pressure on the overstretched healthcare system and “restore integrity back to politics” after years of scandals under former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Easier said than done.

“I can’t help the things that happened before I was prime minister,” Sunak told a group of health workers this week. “What I think you can hold me accountable for is how I handle the things that come up on my watch.”

Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Sunak had managed to overcome the impression that the UK had “a completely insane government”.

“You’d chalk that up as the first thing on his to-do list,” she said. “Otherwise it’s a bit hard to see concrete performance.”

Sunak is a former British chancellor and his top priority was the economic malaise in the country. Gross domestic product remains smaller than before the coronavirus pandemic, and the forecast of the International Monetary Fund this week that the UK will be the only major economy to shrink by 0.6% this year.

Sunak blames global forces – disruption from the pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine. Critics say the elephant is in the room Brexitleading to a sharp reduction in trade between the UK and the European Union.

Sunak, a longtime supporter of Britain’s exit from the bloc, insisted on Wednesday that the cost-of-living crisis had “nothing to do with Brexit”.

Whatever the causes, Sunak has little economic leeway. Annual inflation reached a four-decade high of 11.1% in October and remained painful 10.5% in December. The UK is in the middle of it largest wave of strikes in decades as nurses, paramedics, teachers, border agents and other workers seek pay raises to offset the rising cost of living and the stress of holding down a job in an increasingly poor public sector.

Meanwhile, a faction within the Conservative Party is pushing for immediate tax cuts to encourage growth, despite the damage done by “Trussonomics” several months ago.

“We need growth or our debt will get bigger,” lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader, said this week. “Targeted tax cuts help with that.”

Sunak opposes both unions and tax-cutting Tories. He argues that double-digit public sector wage increases would push inflation even further and that “the best tax cut right now is a reduction in inflation.”

Economists say UK inflation is likely to fall in 2023, allowing Sunak to fulfill one of his key pledges. Other goals are likely to be more difficult to achieve.

He is trying to improve relations with the 27-member EU, and both sides have made progress towards a solution a dispute over Northern Ireland’s trade rules which has taxed business and shut down the regional government in Belfast.

But any deal will anger conservative eurosceptics, who are likely to see rapprochement with Brussels as a betrayal of Brexit. A compromise also faces opposition from Northern Ireland’s British trade unionists, who say post-Brexit customs controls undermine Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

Sunak has also worked to rid the Conservative Party of its reputation for scandal and filth. A member of his cabinet, Gavin Williamson, resigned in November over allegations of bullying. Sunday, Sunak sacked party chairman Nadhim Zahawi for not being honest about a multimillion-dollar tax dispute. Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab is being investigated over allegations that he has bullied officials.

Opposition Labor leader Keir Starmer claimed on Wednesday that Sunak was “too weak” to deal with bad behaviour.

British voters have not yet ruled on Sunak, who has been elected party leader by the 355 Conservative MPs. The government is not due to call national elections until the end of 2024, so Sunak may have time on his side.

Or maybe not. The Conservatives are 20 or more points behind Labor in opinion polls, and poor results in May’s local elections could fuel calls for a new leader.

Some Conservatives are pining for the return of Johnson, whose last words to parliament as prime minister – “Hasta la vista, baby” – hinted at a comeback.

Some analysts say it may be too late for a conservative leader to avoid defeat. An Ipsos poll released this week, which is considered accurate to within 4 percentage points, found that 66% of respondents wanted a change of governing party. Only 10% thought the Conservatives had done a good job.

Steven Fielding, professor of political science at the University of Nottingham, compares the vote to the final years of Prime Minister John Major’s government, wiped out by Tony Blair’s landslide in the 1997 Labor election, which ended 18 years of Conservative rule .

“People just wait for them to leave,” Fielding said. “And the longer they’re around, the more annoyed (voters) they are.”

He said Sunak is “trying his best. But people don’t listen.”