Who will challenge the Sunak succession?

At times such as these, politicians like to say that ‘this is not the time for politics’. Which is not true, of course, because politics never stops, and especially not the politics of personal advancement. Just as sharks must always swim forwards to stay alive, politicians must always be thinking about the next thing, the next job, and the next leader.

Here is a question that arises from the current state of politics, the government’s handling of the pandemic, and the general condition of the nation: who will face Rishi Sunak in the next Conservative leadership contest?

I have no idea when that contest will come and I make absolutely no guess here. Boris Johnson could vacate the leadership and No. 10 this year or he could rule for a decade. But whenever it comes, you’d be brave indeed to put money on Sunak not being in the final two competing to replace him.

Politically, the Chancellor has prospered during these awful times, and not just because he’s been handing out free money in almost unimaginable quantities. It’s not just Conservatives who have been taken by his nerveless calm, command of detail and well-judged tone. Labour MPs are struggling to know how to attack him and he’s starting to achieve some cut-through to the wider public.

Even before the coronavirus, clever, young and ambitious Tory MPs – ministers among them – were seeking to attach themselves to Sunak as the Next Big Thing. And those investments of political capital have only grown in value. In market terms: Sunak Plc is still a BUY.

Let’s say this prediction is correct and Sunak is indeed a final-two contender whenever the contest comes. What sort of candidate will he be, and who might he face? The first is relatively easy to guess at. The second less so.

Conservatives have not yet begun to digest or debate the implications of things like the coronavirus furlough scheme, which might see state spending reach £100 billion to pay the wages of private sector workers. Nor do we know what major adjustments to the state will follow the crisis: today’s Telegraph scoop on Treasury options for raising taxes and squeezing the state pension is just an appetiser.

Those things would require the Tories to break their pre-election promises on tax rises and the pensions triple lock. If, as seems plausible and sensible, Sunak does indeed break those promises, doing so will – among other things – strongly influence the sort of candidate he’d be for the party leadership. Having borrowed and spent hundreds of billions extending the state into private economic life, then hiking taxes and paring back state payments for key Tory voter groups, he’d be the biggest departure yet from the small state, tax-cutting ideals cherished by Tories who fondly recall Margaret Thatcher.

Even if Sunak were to avoid some of those choices on tax and spending, he’ll still be the man who borrowed and spent more than any chancellor in history. No matter what he does afterwards, even if he seeks to unwind it all and more, spending £300 billion extra will forever be part of the Sunak story. Now, I think that doing so is, broadly, the right thing to do, and I suspect a lot of voters will agree. But what about the Conservatives?

Before the crisis, the Tories had chosen two leaders who were not paid-up Thatcherite cutters. Theresa May’s economic agenda was sometimes derided by right-wing colleagues as ‘reheated Milibandism’. Boris Johnson’s economic vision is sometimes hard to define, but it clearly had a large role for the state even before Covid-19 changed things. As this very good Rafael Behr column notes, Boris 2020 is a far cry from the libertarian of his old Telegraph columns.

The Johnson general election victory and early days of big state, active government showed that a new strand of Toryism was under construction. That project will be dramatically advanced by the coronavirus crisis, and Rishi Sunak’s name will be recorded on the planning documents as chief engineer.

Will Conservatives simply accept that though, and accordingly chose as their next leader someone whose election would permanently shift the central point of British politics and economics towards that bigger state?

It seems likely that at least some Tories might want a return to a more Thatcherite approach, seeking to make the party one that promises to dismantle the big state put in place during the crisis. Who would emerge as the champion of that Tory tradition to stand against Rishi Sunak? For fellow Star Wars fans, it would be glorious if the role went to Sajid Javid, a master-and-apprentice battle between two former Treasury colleagues with quite different histories: Winchester vs Filton Technical College.

Some people think Javid is working to establish himself as the libertarian conscience of the Conservative party, waiting for a time when his colleagues tire of all the spending and taxing and look for a small state candidate who was not part of the coronavirus response.

Or maybe that role will go to Jeremy Hunt, whose standing has certainly not suffered for being on the backbenches as health select committee chair this year. Or perhaps it will be someone else who takes on Rishi Sunak in a contest that, whenever it comes, will decide some very big questions that are fast approaching British conservatism.