During a January 2023 speech on “building a better future” the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, insisted that “we can change our country’s character. We can reverse the creeping acceptance of a narrative of decline.”
Months later, this narrative has manifested in Tory malaise and division, low approval ratings, and collapsing buildings. Sunak recently watered down his climate change mitigation policies, and refused to “speculate” on the future of rail project HS2. The Sunak government is seemingly unable to reverse a harmful narrative or maintain its own.
Writing in The Times, columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris observed that “the best and often only way to rebut a narrative is with a bigger narrative”. But political leaders are successful when they present a grand narrative and find a way to connect themselves to it. Simply finding a bigger narrative is not enough – political leaders must be compelling characters within their narrative.
