Sunak suggests next five years will be ‘some of most dangerous’ in UK history and he’s best leader to keep people safe – politics live

Good morning. Rishi Sunak has made various attempts to define what he stands for, in a way that would frame the choice at the next election to his advantage, and this morning we’ll get another version. When he became Tory leader; he was the antidote to Liz Truss; competence and fiscal responsibility. For a while last year he was the motorists’ champion and net zero realist. He has dabbled a bit with being anti-woke. Last autumn, for several weeks, he made a sustained and serious attempt to claim he would be the change candidate at the election (a move that failed because it was wholly implausible). More recently he has been the person “sticking to the plan”. And today he is going to present himself as the leader best able to keep people “safe and secure” in a dangerous world.

Downing Street released some extracts from the speech overnight and Kiran Stacey has written up the briefing here.

And here is the key passage from the advance briefing. Sunak will say:

I have bold ideas that can change our society for the better, and restore people’s confidence and pride in our country.

I feel a profound sense of urgency. Because more will change in the next five years than in the last thirty.

I’m convinced that the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet most transformational our country has ever known.

According to the briefing, Sunak will say that war, a global rise in immigration, threats to “shared values and identities” and new technologies like artificial intelligence are what makes the future so threatening.

One problem is that is his “next five years” theory sounds questionable. Thirty years ago the internet barely had an impact on everyday life and a mobile phone was the size of a brick (and about as intelligent). Another difficulty is that Sunak is leading his party into an election, people like positivity, and his analysis all sounds rather gloomy. According to the advance briefing, Sunak will address this by saying that “we’re a nation of optimists” and that he can offer people a more secure future.

Sunak is not the first Tory to frame the election in these terms. Only last week David Cameron, the foreign secretary and former PM, said keeping people safe would be “on the ballot paper” and that “security to me is the most conservative value of all”.

But if security is the essay question, is the Conservative party the answer? Not according to opinion polls. Last month Lord Ashcroft, the former Tory deputy chair who now runs a respected polling operation, published figures saying that the voters trust Labour more than the Conservatives on all key issues, including defence.

Labour responded overnight with a statement from Pat McFadden, the party’s national campaign coordinator saying, in effect, that it does not really matter what Sunak claims because his party’s record is so poor. McFadden said:

Nothing the prime minister says will change the fact that over the past fourteen years the Conservatives have brought costly chaos to the country, with this being the only parliament in living memory where people’s standard of living will be lower at the end of it than the beginning.

The Tories crashed the economy by using the country for a giant and reckless economic experiment, for which the British people are still paying the price.

Even as the prime minister speaks, others in his party are positioning themselves to replace him.

The only way to stop the chaos, turn the page and start to renew is with a change of government.

The Conservatives can’t fix the country’s problems because they are the problem. Another five years of them would not change anything for the better.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Anas Sarwar, the Scotish Labour leader, gives a speech on Labour’s plans to reset devolution.

10am: Esther McVey, the Cabinet Office minister, gives a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank on “putting common sense at the heart of govenment”.

11am: Rishi Sunak delivers his speech in London at the Policy Exchange thinktank.

2.30pm: Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

3.45pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Also, Keir Starmer is holding a meeting today with Labour’s elected mayors. He will be asking them to work with him on proposals for local growth plans.

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