Rishi Sunak offers little innovation in his five promises for 2023

In his first speech of the new year, the prime minister rattled on enthusiastically about the power of innovation. As a country, we need “to put innovation at the heart of everything we do”, he said. No argument with that, but there was precious little that was especially new in these remarks.

The crusade against antisocial behaviour recalls similar rhetoric from Tony Blair and David Blunkett two decades ago. The lines of family values recall the ill-fated words of John Major. Gordon Brown would be impressed by the idea of rewards for hard work. The rubbery targets for the economy and public finances could have been dreamed up by George Osborne and David Cameron. Cheekily, Rishi Sunak even mentioned levelling up, while taking a few sneaky sideswipes at Boris Johnson’s failure to deliver much more than boosterish slogans in office.

Equally familiar is the politician’s old trick of declaring “unambiguous” new aims which are essentially just as ambiguous as they ever have been. Inflation will be “halved” this year, but from where and in what measure? Growth will return by the end of the year, but how meagre will it be? Debt will be falling, but after the next election. And the small boats “will be stopped”, but when, and would one stray dinghy count?