Rishi Sunak is going to become our new Prime Minister. The farcical pageantry of it all will play out over the coming days — Liz Truss making her last unfortunate pilgrimage to Buckingham Palace, perhaps bumping into Sunak on the way out, who will ask King Charles if he can form a government. Yet another cabinet will have to be appointed, fresh speeches given from outside of 10 Downing Street, new, no doubt more cautious budgets announced, and of course non-stop jeering to endure in the neverending debating society that is the House of Commons.

As entertainment it’s not bad, if rather melodramatic, but it’s no way to run a country. But as we’re blinded by a blizzard of events, comments and furious arguments, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be blinded to the greater, largely unnoticed story playing out before us.

In 2016 the country voted to leave the European Union. Four years of chaos and two new prime ministers later, Boris Johnson finally fudged, compromised and betrayed Britain over the final hurdles and “got Brexit done” (just don’t ask too many questions about Northern Ireland). 

Over 17 million people voted on the basis of one clear promise –– the restoration of British sovereignty. This is what people were told they had lost through the EU, and what would be regained by leaving it. Though we were assured that “we could do whatever we want” once freed of the shackles of Europe, with Lexiteers planning socialism in one country and Hanannites dreaming of a libertarian paradise, this was not what the bulk of Leavers voted for. They wanted lower migration, greater protectionism and more investment in public services. 

This revolt against globalisation, and an unambiguous, unprecedented democratic demand for national sovereignty over our laws, policies and way of life, has not gone away. The current Conservative Party’s comfortable majority in parliament is the direct result of Boris Johnson’s promise to enact this agenda. 

In their 2019 manifesto, the Tories promised to “above all…respect the will of the people”, to “take back control of our laws” and “take back control of our money”. More money for healthcare and policing was promised, “overall numbers [of immigrants] will come down” and commitments made to invest heavily in the most neglected regions of the country, as well as to devolve more power to the regions. 

These promises have been broken successively over the last few months, and in increasingly disturbing ways. 

The abandonment of the entire 2019 manifesto is easily and readily blamed on Covid. Levelling up, which was to involve £100 billion in infrastructure spending alone, was shelved, and thus far the Levelling Up fund comprises £4.8 billion, much of which remains unspent. Instead, £330 billion was spent to keep workers home, as the government incompetently stumbled from one lockdown to another. 

Instead of a British led response, much of our policy was a late, panicked attempt to imitate other countries, and the money that might have been invested in our economy or healthcare system mysteriously vanished into never properly implemented schemes and contracts. Over £30 billion alone vanished into a “Test and Trace” system that didn’t work correctly and came far, far too late to be of any use in relieving the extremity of lockdown. 

Although Boris has rightly been awarded his great share of the blame for his mess, the Chancellor who oversaw the economic response to Covid, and who has limited the fiscal options of any future government, is Rishi Sunak, who was lavishly praised by the press for presiding over an artificial recession and exploding the national debt.

As debt increased, police arrested people for going on walks and the government (rather incompetently) sought to impose its little part of the new global medico-security state. All this passed with remarkably little negative comment, and in an atmosphere of faux-Blitz spirit. But far from being the little island that stood alone against the world, Britain had already been invaded and occupied, just by forces far more subtle than German stormtroopers. 

That reality has become obvious in the past few weeks, if you tune out all the political infighting.

Boris Johnson, who finally lied, fudged and betrayed his way out of, rather than into, power, left a rather hopeless vacuum that was filled, inexplicably, by Liz Truss. She promptly announced that she was betraying and abandoning the 2019 manifesto, and pursuing a radical free market agenda. Clashes soon broke out with new Home Secretary Suella Braverman who was still rather inconveniently trying to limit migration numbers, whilst Liz was trying to sign a trade deal with India. 

The mini budget with its promises of aggressive supply side reforms, unfunded tax cuts for the rich, and plans to push 120,000 people off of Universal Credit, were not quite what the voter ordered. Popular responses were withering, but far more devastating was that of financial markets, with the pound plummeting against the dollar, and a sharp spike in the bond market. 

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng pushed through these reforms in a hurry, refusing to consult the OBR (Office of Budgetary Responsibility) and hinting at further tax cuts to come. Unashamed economic liberals, they believed that their Reaganite pro-market reforms would be greeted with delight by the markets. But they were under a terrible delusion — the market was not their friend, but their master. 

Ironically free marketeers are perhaps the last to realise that the ability of British governments to autonomously set economic policy, even in the most pro-market directions, has disappeared under a succession of structural changes to government, and global economic conditions. 

The Treasury, always a powerful and self-serving part of government, has become a monster which actively undermines every elected government, and pushes for an agenda favourable to itself and acceptable to the financial markets. 

The Faustian pact was first initiated by Blair and Brown, who ceded monetary policy to the Bank of England, threw open the borders to the free flow of labour and capital, and leaving government to focus on pumping enough welfare out to pacify the bits of the country and its populace that were surplus to requirements. 

Six years on from Brexit, national sovereignty has indeed been taken back from Brussels, it’s just taken a slight detour on the way to Westminster and now rests in the City of London, with occasional jaunts to New York, Delhi, Dubai and California depending on who we’re trying to flog warplanes, outsourced jobs, university places or government bonds to this week. Truss’s resignation is only the most flagrant and open demonstration of that reality so far. 

In 1956 another Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was brought down by the pound, then openly wielded as a weapon by the Americans, a moment which helped spell the end of British ambitions to be a truly independent world power. Now Britain faces a similar situation, but the independence we have lost is not over world affairs, but our domestic economic and monetary policy, which is now in the hands of financiers, central bankers and global markets in energy, cash and commodities. 

This humiliation has been neatly offloaded onto Liz Truss, a convenient and hapless scapegoat, but let there be no confusion — this is a national humiliation, and a decisive blow against our claims to be a sovereign, democratic country. 

The symbol and instrument of this humiliation is none other than our new prime minister, Rishi Sunak. How can we describe this man, hailed by George Osbourne (that earlier tool of the markets) as the “solution to our problems” and celebrated as our “first British Asian” PM, and presented in his campaign videos as a rags to riches immigrant success story? 

I’m standing to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and your Prime Minister.

Let’s restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country. #Ready4Rishi

Sign up 👉 https://t.co/KKucZTV7N1 pic.twitter.com/LldqjLRSgF

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) July 8, 2022

Educated at Winchester, then Lincoln College Oxford where he (inevitably) read PPE, this hardy son of toil went on to get an MBA at Stanford, where he met his wife, the heiress of an Indian tech fortune, before proceeding to forge his own entrepreneurial path as an analyst Goldman Sachs, followed by a stint at the coal face of a Californian-based hedge fund. 

It’s hard to think of a man in British politics more personally invested in globalisation and the dominance of financial capitalism than Rishi Sunak, who up until 2021 had US permanent residency status, and filed yearly American tax returns. Meanwhile his wife, Akshata Murty, was reported to be wealthier than the Queen and to have avoided £20 million in UK taxes by gaining non-dom status. 

As Andrew Hunt has pointed out, this story likely extends far beyond the couple’s tax status. The company that makes them the richest family in UK politics, the Indian tech firm Infosys, has been repeatedly sued in America for allegedly breaking immigration law over its sourcing of visas for workers. 

In the UK however, companies like Infosys seemed to have faced few such hurdles, as then chancellor Rishi Sunak was on hand to “fast-track” visas for “high skill” foreign workers, with special emphasis on the tech sector. And despite levying pandemic windfall taxes on oil and gas companies, a similar windfall tax on the tech sector was rejected by Sunak.

Infosys was also a tremendous beneficiary of government contracts during Sunak’s time in the treasury, and of the 2021 trade deal with India, with the post-Brexit government desperate to open Britain to overseas trade and investment. 

Is Sunak, a man whose fortune and career has been built in global finance and information technology, who personally stands to lose out financially if barriers to the free flow of capital and labour are raised, going to honour the 2019 manifesto commitments to “take back control” of money, law and borders? It seems unlikely. 

Sunak will be praised, despite being arguably the most privileged man in British politics, as being a triumph for diversity and social mobility, Britain’s first ethnic minority Prime Minister. But he’s also our first Californian Prime Minister — a man who believes heart and soul in the Silicon Valley “Californian ideology”, and boasts of his time in Stanford as a formative experience that gave him a “bigger, more dynamic approach to change”.

In choosing Rishi Sunak in a panicked attempt to retain power and calm the markets, Tory MPs have signed away what is left of British sovereignty over our own affairs. You will hear claims that “this is how the British system works”, that in a parliamentary democracy he need only win the confidence of parliament, and does not need to go to the country.

This is sheer and utter nonsense. The Conservative majority was elected, in its current form, on the basis of the 2019 manifesto, with its promises to strengthen the public sector, heal regional inequality, and reclaim sovereignty over our borders, law and finances. If Sunak and his party no longer intend to honour those commitments, they must win a fresh mandate in a general election.