What a difference a day makes. On Monday Rishi Sunak had pitched up to the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference in Birmingham to give a keynote speech. At least that’s what the delegates had been led to expect. What they got was a short slapdash ramble in which they were urged to think that innovation was the answer to all their problems. Delivered and received in a sense of repressed boredom.
If the prime minister had wanted to sound as if he didn’t really give a toss – that the Conservatives were completely out of ideas on how best to run the economy – he wouldn’t have changed a beat. The CBI heard him out, but the applause was perfunctory at best. Just enough to maintain a patina of politeness. But nothing more. Ten minutes of everyone’s lives that they would never get back.
