Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bleak, vapid and banal: why are the Tory leadership videos so awful?

Tom Tugendhat delivers a short, bleak and utterly miserable piece to camera

The Tory candidates have released a set of videos presenting their claim to become Britain’s next prime minister.

Frontrunner Rishi Sunak has dubbed his pitch, ‘Ready for Rishi’, which sounds, unfortunately, like the cheapest option at a Hounslow massage parlour. His movie centres on his unstoppable rise to world domination. His mum was a penniless immigrant who passed her exams and worked at a chemist’s shop in Southampton. His Dad was a humble NHS doctor. Scratchy old Kodak photos show us the ‘Sunak Pharmacy’ in all its faded grandeur. He omits his public school days and his City whizz-kid career. And he says nothing about his mega-rich wife.

Clearly he wants us to believe that he moved straight from mum’s corner shop to the House of Commons.

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