When Rishi Sunak told his MPs to unite behind him last week, many were left scratching their heads. Both the subject and object of the sentence baffled them. How was it possible for Conservative MPs to wean themselves off their addiction to psychodrama after eight straight years of it? And what, precisely, were they supposed to unite behind?
Sunak told the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers last Wednesday that the majority of MPs in the room “are determined to fight: to stand up for our values, our vision and our record”. But even his allies admit privately to being confused about what they are supposed to say about any of those three things. Which Rishi Sunak are they supposed to be backing? There are almost as many versions of the prime minister as there are Barbie dolls. Initially, he was Not-Truss Rishi: the antidote to the near-fatal poisoning of the party by the Liz Truss premiership. Like a Barbie doll with specific cultural references, like the 1980s Barbie and the Rockers Barbie, who carried a cassette of her own tunes that children today would struggle to play, let alone understand, this version was a very particular solution to a very particular problem and Sunak is now much closer to the election than he is to the madness of September 2022.
