A psychotherapist would have a field day with Rishi Sunak. His pathology isn’t quite as obvious as with Boris Johnson or Liz Truss but it is there nonetheless. Scratch the heavily defended surface and you find a suitable case for treatment. There’s the overbearing sense of entitlement combined with a constant craving to be noticed. A man with so little self-worth, his only validation comes from others.
There’s his persistent tetchiness; the irritation at not being properly understood. He needs to be appreciated. Needs people to be grateful to him. For everyone to realise they only exist for him to do them a favour. That is our purpose in life. Satellites to orbit Rish!.
But the real work is to be found in Sunak’s self-hatred. Forget the failing upwards. Forget the £750m in the family kitty. Those are mere distractions. What you are left with is a paradox. Why has the man who could have anything made it his life’s ambition to do something at which he is so obviously unsuited? One where his shortcomings are so ruthlessly and publicly exposed?
As prime minister Rish! has yet to find something he can do well. Not being Truss no longer really counts. That only bought him a six-month honeymoon. Of his five pledges he has failed on four and the other one was nothing to do with him. Yet still he cannot let go. Carries on feeding his illness under the umbrella delusion of public service. Relies on the nonexistent applause to mask his self-loathing. The kindest thing any of us could do is vote him out of office.
But for now there is the general election that cannot be won. The election Sunak reluctantly called because he had run out of options. Backed into a corner by his own uselessness. Things may be utterly shit now but they would probably be even more shit in the autumn. The election that almost no Conservative MP wanted right now. They needed all the time they could get to line up future employment.
Sunak looks like a man alone. At his opening event in the toilets of the ExCeL centre in London on Wednesday evening, his cabinet lined up behind him. All looked lost in their private grief. Like mourners at their own funeral. They were all in shock. They had always known their political careers were coming to an end: they just hadn’t expected it to be this soon. None was capable of speech. Falling, falling, falling into the existential abyss.
The last person standing on Team Sunak is Sunak himself. His self-hatred urging him ever onwards to his final immolation. So first thing on Thursday he was out and about on the airwaves trying to find the best version of himself. Predictably enough it all ended in tears as his irritation got the better of him. He just couldn’t bear it when Nick Robinson started contradicting him. When his obvious lies were mirrored back to him. That he imagines he is going to win the TV debates is yet another manifestation of how deluded he is.
Still, there was always a ride in a private jet to cheer him up. The UK carbon footprint is going to take a hell of a beating from Sunak over the next six weeks. So an hour or so later, Rish! found himself in a biscuit distribution centre in Ilkeston that had been in security lockdown since Monday in anticipation of the prime minister’s visit. Sunak’s contribution to national productivity.
Nothing had been left to chance. Especially the audience. Alongside a few miserable-looking employees – no one likes to be associated with failure – Tory HQ had packed the 25-weak crowd with a few Tory activists disguised in hi-vis jackets meant to look like ordinary workers. Rish! went into his default campaigning mode. That’s to say he started up the condescending, entitled nasal whine. He may be his very own mini-me, but he has yet to find someone to whom he doesn’t automatically talk down to. He can’t help himself.
Let the patronising begin. It was like this. Right? OK? Are you listening, little people? Well, let me talk a little slower because you’re all probably a bit thick. You are from up north, after all. Do we want to go back to square one?
Er, no. That’s why Labour are 21 points ahead in the polls. It was your lot that put us at square one. Do you think we are halfwits? Actually, don’t answer that one.
We need a bold future and I’m a bold kind of guy, he said. That’s why I’ve come up with a Rwanda plan that doesn’t work. And 15 other European countries have decided to leave the EU and refuse to recognise European courts by declaring unsafe countries to be safe.
It’s hard to know which is worse. That he believes this shit. In which case he needs urgent help. Or if he’s just utterly cynical.
Having basically delivered the standard stump speech he had given twice the day before, there was just time to take questions from the stooges. Still, he’s nothing if not equal opportunities because he treated them like halfwits too. I’ve brought in the smoking ban, he said. No, you haven’t. The bill has fallen because you called the election. For a man desperate for a political legacy, he’s his own worst enemy.
Then time to stretch out his legs in the private jet for the trip to Glamorgan for more of the same. This time in a brewery. Piss ups and all that. Obviously it was a car crash. Mr Man of the People managed to alienate everyone by forgetting that Wales hadn’t qualified for the Euros. Next stop Scotland and then Northern Ireland tomorrow. By which time he will have hacked off the entire UK. Great start Rish!.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer was kicking off Labour’s campaign at Gillingham football club in Kent. He too gave his usual election number, with a subtle difference. Where Sunak had been all about “give me your vote, vote for me or I won’t exist”, Starmer was more collaborative. This was our vote. So use it to effect your own change. It made a pleasant change to be treated like a person.
Down in central London, the Reform leader, Richard Tice, was grappling with his own internal contradiction. That one of the most off-putting things about the Reform party is himself. Dicky is instantly dislikeable. He looks untrustworthy. The sort of man who you might find on the shopping channel trying to flog you an air fryer that would fall apart within a week.
Even Nigel Farage can’t be arsed with Dicky any more. He won’t be standing as a candidate and may drop in for an hour’s campaigning one day if it’s sunny and Donald Trump doesn’t need him. Still, Reform looks likely to take chunks out of the Tory vote. So Dicky has his uses.
