Consider the struggle of a modern statesman such as Rishi Sunak, forced to segue from fibbing about a meat tax and state-mandated carpooling to flying to the Middle East and saying something for the ages. In not altogether unanticipated scenes, the prime minister hasn’t managed it.
For all Sunak’s studied earnestness, he has become a figure that no one serious can quite take seriously. We live in an era where politicians have cannibalised their own gravitas for cheap thrills and pyrrhic wins. I know generals are always fighting the last war, but that’s quite hard to respect when it was “the war on motorists”. The culture wars are the only conflict where you actively want the veterans to end up homeless.
