What Sunak’s big speech reveals about his election strategy

Rishi Sunak has this morning given a speech aimed at framing the choice at the next election: security with the Tories or risk with Labour. The Prime Minister’s 30-minute address at the Policy Exchange think tank in London was centred on the idea that ‘the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet most transformational our country has ever known’. The right choice of leader for the country, he implied, is the person who can be trusted most to shepherd the UK through a period of change ranging from foreign threats to artificial intelligence to cultural challenges. Unsurprisingly, Sunak argued that the right leader to handle the fact that ‘more will change in the next five years than in the last 30’ is, in fact, himself.

Of the global challenges, Sunak said: ‘The dangers that threaten our country are real. There’s an increasing number of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China working together to undermine us and our values.