In 2019 the now-departed chancellor, Rishi Sunak, played a vital role in boosting Boris Johnson’s chances of becoming Tory leader. He co-wrote a statement declaring: “Boris Johnson is one of life’s optimists and can help us recapture a sense of excitement and hope about what we Conservatives can do for Britain.” On Tuesday night, he changed his mind. It had apparently taken him three years to discover what everyone already knew – indeed, what Johnson had blatantly advertised all along, dangling from a zipwire, standing beside the Vote Leave bus, filing fibbing copy to the Telegraph.
What’s more, Sunak was meant to have spent this week hailing “the biggest personal tax cut in over a decade”, a giveaway precision-targeted at those tabloids that once purred approval at the government but now only hiss and spit. It was the start of yet another relaunch: the Treasury and the Tory press office lined up all their ducks, and Sunak and Johnson were gearing up for an event next week. Instead the prime minister looks like toast and almost every other story is lost in the noise – even the ones about Britons getting a bit more cash.
