This is the End. Beautiful Friend. This is the End. My only Friend, the End.
Forget about Wednesday’s budget. That 2p reduction on national insurance that worked so well last year. That surprise decision to maintain the freeze on fuel duty for the 437th year in a row. Those cuts to public services that Jeremy Hunt is trying to pretend he hasn’t been briefing the newspapers about. None of this matters. Nothing is going to switch the dial. There is nothing more Rishi Sunak can do. If you don’t love him now, you never will.
We are now in the Tunnel. That political parallel universe in which everything and nothing happens. You can take your pick. The news schedules are busier than ever but are forgotten within hours. Because nothing really matters. We are now on a rinse, spin and repeat cycle that will only end in a general election. Where the debate gets ever more extreme yet somehow less substantial. Most people have long since switched off. You can almost hear their screams of, ‘Make it stop’.
Just count the days. Breathe deeply. Squeeze in an extra pilates session. Anything to distract yourself. Be of good comfort. The end is getting ever closer.
How can we be sure? Because Rish! has just done a video for Grazia. The inevitable kiss of death. You know there is no way out now. This is the fate of every party leader with an election imminent. But there is no comeback. Once sold, your soul can never be redeemed.
This is the Sunaks relaxing at home together. Or rather Rish! and Akshata staring miserably into a camera while sitting on a sofa. A more excruciating five and a half minutes would be hard to find. You can see the look of death behind Rish!’s eyes. Even he – someone notoriously unself-aware – knows this is a video too far. But then he’s come too far to back down now. The wheels are spinning far too fast for him to get off now. All he can do is wait till they stop. Only then will he discover where he’s been spat out.
So he smiles and smiles and smiles. And still he doesn’t come close to warmth or sincerity. It is the icy smile of a man praying that his wife doesn’t land him in it. Because Akshata, at least, still seems up for it.
No one has told her there are no winners in this latest PR stunt. The best you can hope for is to come out unscathed. Either she is terminally bored with her life and finds mind-numbingly dumb questions a merciful release. Or she is a stunningly good actor. Put it like this: this is the level of interview you would even trust Chris Philp not to screw up. On second thoughts, perhaps not.
Let’s start with the chores. Who makes the bed? Definitely not me, said Akshata. Full of energy, totes engaging with this. “I’m not a morning person. At college, Rish! – she’s even adopted my nickname for him – would come round and I’d still be in bed eating.”
“Er, yes,” Sunak interrupted. This was too much information. Time to take control of the narrative. He really, really cared about bed-making. So much so that he would sometimes interrupt a meeting of the cabinet to go upstairs to the Downing Street flat to make sure it was done properly.
SCOOP.
How about loading the dishwasher? Rish! dived in. This was also very much his territory. He happened to also really, really care about this. If it wasn’t done properly, he would empty it and start again.
KILL ME NOW. Literally, who cares? I mean, here we have a prime minister who has guided the economy into a recession. Who is prepared to break international law to fly a plane load of refugees to Rwanda. Who has done nothing to stop the NHS from falling apart. Who is now trying to fight a culture war that he has started. Who takes no responsibility for the extremism in his own party.
And now we’re all supposed to think, “You know what, I can overlook all this because he loads the dishwasher. That’s my kind of guy. He gets my vote. What a human! What a hero!” Er … if it’s all the same, I’d be perfectly happy if Rish! never went anywhere near the kitchen provided he made a decent job of running the country.
But that wasn’t the agenda. So on we went. How about the children? Akshata was quite strict with them about their schoolwork, but otherwise wasn’t that bothered. Rish! liked to give them snacks. Bless. But he also wished they would walk the dog from time to time. But then, why have staff? They can’t just sit around all day.
Akshata admitted she had more leisure time than her husband. Who would have guessed? Though what she did with it, she wouldn’t say. Other than go to the odd spin class. Maybe she just puts her feet up on the sofa and manages her investments all day. So that when Rish! comes back from work saying the economy is in crisis again, she can tell him the good news that they have made another couple of million.
And that was about it. Rish! didn’t have time to read. So bedtime was the same episode of Friends over and over again. Why bother, when you can just watch this video? This will knock you out quicker than your nightly dose of fentanyl. An exercise in sublime futility. Imagine being too boring for your new, blissed out neighbours in Malibu.
Still, Rish! could at least console himself that he hadn’t committed the cardinal error of committing news. Unlike David Cameron, who in his BBC hagiography before the 2015 election, in between saying “Hail, good fellow, well met” to various tradesmen in Chipping Norton, let slip that he was too chillaxed for words and couldn’t face the prospect of running for a third term. Much too much like hard work. Well, that ended well, didn’t it?
But life can be cripplingly unfair at times. You’d have thought that Dave would have run his course after Brexit. That he had done enough damage. Time to say bye byes. But for Dave there would be second, third or even fourth chances. For men like Dave there always are.
Lord Big Dave is now foreign secretary. Generally thought to be doing a great job. We are supposed to be grateful that he is doing us the favour. The truth is he’s much the same as he always was. It’s just that the competition has become so much weaker. He only looks like a statesman because he’s up against the Tory class of 24. What goes around, comes around, I guess. There’s hope for Rishi yet.
