Much more of this and I might begin to feel sorry for Rishi Sunak. One week in and there’s no sign of anyone from the cabinet. While Keir Starmer has been touring the country with guest appearances from Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting, poor Rish! has been forced to go it alone. Maybe he thinks it’s safer that way.
Jeremy Hunt has been left to post leaflets through letterboxes in an uphill struggle to save his own seat. He’s not trusted to do anything else. The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, doesn’t appear to have noticed the junior doctors have voted to go back on strike. Kemi Badenoch is blissfully unaware a Czech billionaire wants to buy Royal Mail. Lord Big Dave is far too grand to do anything that might involve meeting the little people.
In short, the country has been left to run itself. Still, Belgium managed for 14 months without a government, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Worse still for Rish!, his minders have insisted that he tries to do human. His normal trip to the west country would involve a helicopter ride, a brief stop to talk down to a few people and then back to London in time for lunch. But this time he was forced to take the sleeper train to Penzance. The humiliation. In a carriage with strangers. Then posing with a pint when everyone knows he doesn’t drink. Stick with the full fat Coke. Be yourself.
Come late afternoon, Sunak was to be found in Honiton, a Devon town halfway between Taunton and Exeter. A place no Tory leader would think of visiting because it always used to be a constituency that could be counted on to deliver a Conservative MP.
No longer. Honiton is held by the Lib Dems after the Tory MP Neil Parish was forced to step down for repeatedly watching porn on his phone in the Commons. You know how it is. Tractors are a gateway drug. You start with a Massey Ferguson and in a matter of minutes you’ve moved on to an orgy.
Rish! dashed into the aircraft hangar that doubles as the British headquarters of Supacat, a military vehicle manufacturer. His jacket was off, his sleeves rolled up, his eyes spun like those of someone who has spent too long with Michael Gove. Or perhaps he had just overdosed on Red Bull. Call it the quantity theory of energy.
Almost everyone else in the building looked unimpressed. The apprentices who lined up in shot of the TV cameras appeared uniformly bored. They had things to do, places to go. One man kept his arms folded throughout. Heavy passive aggressive vibes.
Not that Sunak noticed. That’s his major failing. He can’t relate to anyone. He can’t read the room. He’s always just assumed that he’s the most important person in it. That other people will be grateful for his contribution. He started by thanking Rebecca Pow, the Tory MP for neighbouring Taunton, for introducing him and congratulated her on winning £20m of levelling up funds for the area. Er hello, she’s a Conservative MP in what is now a marginal seat. All she had to do was make one phone call and turn up with a wheelbarrow.
Then we moved straight into his well rehearsed, content-lite stump speech. It has reached the stage where everyone knows what he’s going to say before he does. No wonder the main vibe of every event is one of catatonia. If a drug dealer got hold of Sunak’s itinerary, he could clean up by flogging the press-ganged audience blister packs of Mogadon. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rish! wasn’t running the cartel himself. Son of a pharmacist and all that. Would explain a lot.
It’s a wonder Sunak can get through these bashes with a straight face. One can only conclude that he is either a lot dimmer than he would like us to think or he has borderline sociopathic tendencies. Telling porkies in a desperate effort to change at least one mind. First there was the security bit. The world was a really dangerous place. This was a good thing because it enabled Supacat to sell more vehicles. The last thing the company needs is a sudden outburst of peace and tranquillity.
Then the nonsense: the only party to trust to rebuild the economy was the one that fucked it up in the first place. And Rwanda: that was working a treat and every other European country was following the same approach. I must have missed that bit where 27 EU countries unilaterally decided to bin the ECHR and took to declaring that unsafe countries were now safe. Must pay more attention.
“You don’t like to be taken for granted,” he said. Lacking the self-awareness that that was precisely what he was doing. He was doing everyone a favour by taking up an hour of their day to tell them stuff they didn’t want to hear. All for some mindless photo opportunity that would quickly be forgotten amid all the other mindless photo opportunities we would be forced to endure in the coming weeks.
Look right here for the true meaning of futility. Especially as even Rish! knows he’s going to lose. Maybe that’s why his cabinet have all gone awol. Let the prime minister own the failure. Rats and sinking ships.
Come the Q&A, even Red Bull Rish! was flagging. Even the most engaged members of the audience were apathetic at best. Not sure Honiton is going back to the Tories.
One woman wanted to know more about national service. Sunak wasn’t really able to help as he hadn’t given it much thought. It was only ever intended to be an eye-catching gimmick from the new policy-a-day prime minister. He had never expected to have to implement it. Much the same with the Triple Lock Plus. And Mickey Mouse degrees. No one can name one course scheduled for the chop.
There were only three questions allowed from the media. Wasn’t he worried about the polls? Not at all. He was thrilled by them. He had been having great conversations with people.
Let’s think this through. At most, it’s 20 conversations a day for 40 days. At that rate he would need the campaign to last well over 100 years to be in with a shout.
Couldn’t he have done more to stop the junior doctors’ strike? Like talk to them? No. That was one conversation he wasn’t prepared to have. Even the Express was sceptical. Did he think he might be trying to scare pensioners? Again, no. Labour was definitely hellbent on killing everyone over 66. Starmer was going to starve them into submission.
And that was that. Rish! was now free to go. His farewell tour is descending into pathos. It would be kindest to end it all here. But we all keep buggering on because that is the way of the world. The ship of fools sails on.
