“It’s the optics that matter” is a modern cliche of political life. It doesn’t matter what you say so much as how you say it – and where you say it. If this is true, then the early election omens are not good for Rishi Sunak.
Standing at the lectern, he looked like a schoolboy who’d been sent into the yard for being naughty. Hunched shoulders and sodden smile, he grimaced through a speech that was badly written and far too long.
Where he gave the speech was nowhere unusual – in front of Downing Street like so many other prime ministers before him. Except he did it in the pouring rain, and was thoroughly soaked before he’d even got to the point. The sound of New Labour’s anthem “Things Can Only Get Better” blasting out in the background from a nearby protester’s speaker only added to the sense of the bizarre.
