Rishi Sunak grilled on HS2 by Susanna Reid

Rishi Sunak has barely a year to “move the needle”, pollster Sir John Curtice has warned as the Prime Minister gears up for arguably the most important speech of his career.

But following Suella Braverman’s barnstorming speech to the Conservative Party Conference yesterday, Sir John also acknowledged Mr Sunak was in a backs-to-the-wall situation – and suggested the former Chancellor needed to produce evidence of tangible improvement before Christmas.

Mr Sunak is scheduled to address the conference just after 11am – and is expected to confirm his decision to scrap the northern section of HS2, from Birmingham to Manchester.

Sir John, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, the pressure was most definitely on the 43-year-old.

He told Express.co.uk: “We are talking about somebody who was in a sense made Prime Minister in the hope that he will be able to turn around a pretty dire position which the Conservatives find themselves in the wake of the Liz Truss fiscal event, which of course added to what happened to Boris Johnson and Partygate.

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“But the problem has been in a sense that Labour’s lead has not been significantly narrowed since Sunak became Prime Minister.

“And secondly, when Sunak entered government, less unpopular than his party, the hope was that he would be able to bring his party up – but if anything has been the opposite has been going on.”

Noises coming out of Number 10 indicated that Mr Sunak recognised the need to “move on to the front foot” and “give people a clearer sense of what he’s about”, Sir John said.

He added: “The thing about party conference speech is because it gets a lot of publicity because everybody is there it does provide an unparalleled opportunity to say something new and give your government and yourself a sense of direction.”

However, there was a risk that Mr Sunak’s apparent dithering over the future of the high-speed rail link had undermined his credibility, Sir John warned.

He continued: “He is somebody who doesn’t like being pushed off course. Sometimes in politics, you’ve got to respond to how things develop.”

Allied to this, the public were still not entirely clear who Mr Sunak was, Sir John said.

He explained: “One of his weaknesses is that he is a master of detail but he’s not very good at framing.

“The point with Liz Truss, we knew what she was about, ‘a helpout not a handout’, which was a brilliant phrase. Sunak has so far failed to do that.

“Other thing is he can be brittle when put under pressure and that got exposed the last two days.

“So if he makes a brilliant speech tomorrow and gives people the impression of a somewhat more dynamic personality that he’s basically conveyed so far, then it could be important but you can see the problems that he’s got to overcome.”

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Acknowledging that Mr Sunak was in effect in a “backs-to-the-wall” situation, Sir John said: “Basically, if you’ve hardly moved the dial in the last 12 months, if you’re going to change people’s perceptions, expectations, etc, then yes, he probably needs to do so by Christmas.”

Failure to set out his vision adequately increased the chances of a whispering campaign against him as Tory MPs became increasingly concerned about the prospect of losing their seats, Sir John warned.

He said: “In the end, the authority of leaders is very much a function of the perceived ability to win. Boris Johnson has survived for as long as he did, despite the fact that arguably he was a much better campaigner than he was somebody in government, because people thought he could win.

“Sunak needs a phrase underpinned by a vision, which is then underpinned by policies that might be able to deliver that vision.

“These are the three levels you need to have – it’s no good having detailed policies on their own and that’s it it’s no good having a phrase unless you can show you can deliver it – Get Brexit Done, Take Back Control – these are brilliant phrases.”

In any case, when it came to conference speeches, there were no guarantees, irrespective of the political party involved, Sir John emphasised.

He said: “Many of them pass people by – but they occasionally appear to make a difference.

“The one that quite a few people are reminding themselves at the moment is George Osborne’s 2007 inheritance tax promise at the Tory conference which certainly seemed to how to improve the Conservative position in the polls and dissuaded Gordon Brown from holding an early election. The

“Liberal Democrats are often quite heavily response-dependent on conference because it gives them a bit of time but they don’t always.”

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock made an impact with his speech in 1985 about Liverpool Council and Militant Tendency, as did Tony Blair when he called for the abolition of Clause 4, Sir John pointed out.

He stressed: “These are things that got endlessly repeated, and in both instances were used, if that’s the right word, by the Labour Party to try to convey to the public that the Labour Party had moved away from what some people regarded as too left-wing a position.

“So sometimes, it can it can add to the political discourse.”

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