Donald Trump has famously been a drag on his own business career. He would have been richer today had he simply put his inheritance into an index tracker fund. Politically, however … you have to concede he is doing quite well for himself. Rishi Sunak is the opposite. He’s a successful businessman who is now a drag on his political fortunes. He would have done better in this election had he simply stood in the rain that afternoon and announced: “I’m calling it – and it’s tomorrow!” Alas, he didn’t, and now his position depletes further with each passing day. Sunak is like an extremely unstable isotope, losing energy by the hour. The only way he’d poll high is with a Geiger counter.
Anyway, please don your fallout suits and proceed straight to the site of his LBC phone-in this morning, guided by Nick Ferrari. You’ll see a lot about Sunak promising to cut taxes now inflation has fallen to 2% and a caller telling him he was “a pound shop Nigel Farage”. But it’s largely just noise. Probably the most telling bit was when a chap rang up to talk to Sunak about his imminent resignation honours, and instead of remembering to say that he wasn’t going to be doing any resignation honours for a while, the prime minister engaged thoughtfully with the “very interesting question” in a way that suggested he completely accepted its central premise.
And he now embodies resignation in all its definitions. For a man who says he’s still fighting for this title, Sunak has an unfortunate tic when answering voters, epitomised by the reply he gave to Ellen, a young woman who felt her prospects had got measurably far worse over the past 14 years: “I’m sorry you feel that and I’m probably not going to be able to convince you.” Many, many variations were available over the course of this hour. “I’m sorry you feel like that.” “I know people didn’t really want to hear what I had to say.” “I know Alistair [the caller] won’t agree with me on that.” “You’re sighing, but what do you expect me to say?” This. Increasingly, observers expect him to say this.
The downbeat stuff is, however, more to the general taste than Sunak’s stabs at aspirational material. The chat in the YouTube stream of the interview was a stream of grimace emojis every time the PM said the likes of “unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get everything done in this parliament”. This feels a bit like the captain of the Titanic saying: “Unfortunately we haven’t been able to deliver the standard of cocktail service we would like this evening. Please stick with us and we’ll make sure that later on, everyone has access to the freshest fish.” We heard about the “huge untapped potential” of brownfield sites for housebuilding, a dangled promise that demanded the response: you’ve had 14 years to tap that. Guys – and it’s just possible you’ve heard this before – you’re never going to tap that.
Yet elsewhere the party’s fatalism feels less convincing than its optimism. The Conservatives also seem to be campaigning on a ticket of outlandish defeatism, telling voters that unless they put the cross in their box in two weeks, they will be risking “a generation under Labour”. Now come, come. If people become dissatisfied with Labour (pretty much locked on, this being the way of all things), then they will of course have the option of simply not voting for them in the elections that will pop up regularly during that notional generation. If this iteration of the Conservative party has shown us anything, it’s that it is perfectly possible for a prime minister to be just another piece of throwaway fast fashion.
As for other lowlights of this phone-in, I didn’t love the section on the personal growth of hideous mega-donors, inspired by Frank Hester, the Tory benefactor who has been readmitted to the fold despite having been exposed as saying of Diane Abbott: “You just want to hate all black women because she’s there.” But, as Sunak explained of the biggest-ever donor to his party: “He’s learned from it.” OMG totally. And if you believe that, I’ve got a Conservative party manifesto to sell you. Having said that, some of Ferrari’s gambits did tend toward the category “Questions To Which The Answer Is Fuck Off”. “You are a Hindu,” began one. “I understand that one of the tenets of Hinduism is that you are to be discouraged from lying.”
Dearie me. I snapped my pencil tip off at that point so my notes fail me, but I think the question to which Ferrari wanted an honest answer was: “Do you seriously feel vindicated calling this election?” Sunak explained that people like Nick had previously kept asking him why he didn’t call an election, “and then you call an election and everyone’s like: ‘Why did you call an election?’” Mm. Well, he’s still got two more of the longest weeks of his life to workshop the perfect answer.
