Back in February the New Statesman reported that Keir Starmer’s inner-circle had concluded that Rishi Sunak was no longer to be feared as a potential successor to Boris Johnson because he was ‘crap at politics’.
At the time this appeared to be a pronouncement that fell under the ‘doth protest too much’ rule, coined by William Shakespeare back in the day, especially given that the briefing also alleged Labour considered Liz Truss a more formidable threat to its electoral fortunes.
But the first month of Sunak’s premiership suggests the Labour briefer was onto something. After the disastrous collapse of Truss’s economic strategy, the failure of which had been accurately predicted by Sunak, he had every chance of receiving an electoral honeymoon.
Opinion polls show that he didn’t get one. Or if he did then it was barely perceptible and very short-lived. The latest polls show things have settled with Sunak’s Tories recording an average 27 per cent support, compared to Labour’s 48 per cent: wipe-out territory.
Perhaps this is because Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget and its disastrous aftermath simply broke the Tory reputation for economic management as badly as the events of Black Wednesday did 30 years previously. But perhaps it is also because Rishi Sunak has indeed turned out to be bad at politics.
Consider the impression he has given voters in these formative early weeks of his premiership. First No. 10 said he was too busy dealing with the domestic economic crisis to go to the COP27 summit – a ballsy stance that went down well among the Tory-considering electorate.
But then he U-turned and went anyway. While at COP he failed to contest the prevailing ideology there that instigators of the industrial revolution, such as the UK, should pay ‘climate reparations’ to developing nations. In effect, the global elite was asking Britain to be ashamed of its heritage and Sunak did not demur. It was left to Boris Johnson – so helpfully on parade at the same event – to dismiss the notion.
Worse was to follow. In the margins of the COP, Sunak had his first meeting with Emmanuel Macron, President of France. The pictures from this event showed Sunak mirroring Macron in every regard; hair, clothes, frame, posture, beaming facial expressions. They even skipped towards each other like lovers on a beach: peas-in-a-pod centrist technocrats.
Anyone thinking this was just a coincidence involving two smartly-dressed short and wire-framed blokes bumping into each other symmetrically would have been disabused of that notion by Sunak’s displays at the G20 summit a few days later.
Here it was not Macron, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who got the full mirroring treatment. If there is one figure who sits above Macron in the demonology of many right-of-centre voters then it is the excruciatingly woke leader of Canada.
Yet Sunak immediately adopted him as his new best friend, with Downing Street eagerly putting out photographs of the pair in matching shirt-sleeve order, then posing alongside World Economic Forum boss Klaus Schwab in near-identical tropical shirts, then doing a joint broadcast. Finally footage emerged of them meeting up at a restaurant for a further love-in, with a beaming Sunak declaring ‘I’m glad we could make this work’ before sitting across the table and laughing delightedly at his opposite number’s bon mots.
In what universe did Team Sunak think that the crucial test he needed to pass in the eyes of the British public was that he could fit in on the international stage and get along with other fixtures of the global billionaire boys club?
It was also reported that at the G20, Sunak had promised US President Joe Biden that he would have a new deal in place with the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol by April – thereby surrendering, Theresa May-style, the negotiating leverage that the option of toughing things out with Brussels long-term could have given him. Back at home, Suella Braverman was left to unveil the bounty of Sunak’s love-in with Macron: a new ‘deal’ on Channel migrants which involved Britain paying yet more money to France in return for zero measurable commitments on clamping down on the dinghies.
After all this, Sunak flew back to Britain to alongside Jeremy Hunt for the unfurling of their joint economic master plan involving the caning of Middle Britain with tax rises, recessionary forecasts and projections of the biggest drop in living standards for generations.
Whatever next – exclusive photos of Rishi and friends enjoying a pool party at his mansion in North Yorkshire, perhaps? Or a partnership with Tod’s to unveil a new range of £500 velvet loafers that will become must-haves for King’s Road lounge lizards?
Before the advent of the Sunak premiership it was difficult to envisage a political leader who could be more out-of-touch with provincial English sensibilities than Sir Keir Starmer. It isn’t anymore.
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