Rishi Sunak vows to end the ‘30-year status quo’ in Tory conference speech

Rishi Sunak pitched himself as the change candidate at the next election in his speech to Conservative party conference this afternoon. It was a bold move after 13 years, to argue that ‘if this country is to change, it can only be us who do it’, and to complain that ‘politics doesn’t work the way it should’. He didn’t go so far as to repudiate his predecessors: in fact, he said he didn’t want to ‘waste time’ going over the past and the ‘difficult circumstances’ in which he came into office. But he did refer to a ‘30-year status quo I am here to end’ – at that point in the speech it was in connection to Keir Starmer as the ‘walking definition’ of that status quo, but the past 13 years of status quo have been Tory, not Labour.

Either way, Sunak repeatedly pitched himself as the man who is dismantling the consensus, whether it be on transport policy, health or immigration.