Rishi Sunak’s visa politics has implications for Indian students
Does the political survival of Britain’s first Indian-origin prime minister call for the sacrifice of the dreams of thousands of Indian students aspiring to study in the UK and find a job there to pay off the loans they have taken to finance their education? We hope Rishi Sunak will rise above the primitive instinct to make sacrifices and instead turn fortune's grimace into a smile. Right now, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is on a losing wicket in British politics. It has lost all recent by-elections and city council elections.
The Labour Party leads them in opinion polls by big margins. The Scottish Nationalist Party is losing its appeal with many voters in Scotland, who are now likely to vote Labour, probably bringing Labour’s tally of lawmakers from Scotland back to majority levels in the next round of British general elections. Sunak is not necessarily to blame for voter disenchantment with the Tories.
They have been in power since 2010, and the natural accumulation of anti-incumbency over nearly 14 years could be crippling by itself. Then there are Boris Johnson’s shenanigans during Covid – cake and champagne parties at 10 Downing Street when all of Britain was locked down and people were prevented from travel even to meet their ailing relatives, and deliberate lying about such hypocrisy – that have thoroughly put off traditional Tory voters. Liz Truss, who briefly succeeded Johnson as prime minister, made a hash of her Budget by proposing tax cuts without getting them evaluated by the Budget Office for their implication for the exchequer, irking bond vigilantes and sending bond yields spiking.
Read more on livemint.com
