One day, we will stop laughing at the video bids for the Tory leadership long enough to be afraid of these maniacs. Today is not that day. Rishi Sunak sprang first, with a love letter to himself and the country, told through his origin story – just another ordinary NHS-loving, hard-working family, who worked themselves so hard that they were able to send their child to Winchester College boarding school. That’s just how hard you work if you love your children, OK? “Wow, that was fast, to produce something so slick and convincing,” said absolutely no one, except the ones who were being sarcastic.
Sunak looks up a lot in the video, at some unseen spectacle of beauty, presumably the future. “I think he thought he was a pop star,” said one outraged caller to BBC Radio 4’s Any Answers?. She had liked him before his stupid video, but this was frankly un-British. “He is British,” she clarified, “but I don’t think this video is particularly British.”
She was right, on this point if no other: it looked as if he was running to be governor of a red state in the US. His eyes shone as he talked about his patriotism, and what his decisions will decide, and by rights it should be the worst clip ever of any politician, but it wasn’t even the worst clip of Rishi Sunak. Shortly afterwards, footage surfaced of the former chancellor describing his milieu for the documentary Middle Classes: The Rise and Sprawl, made in 2001. “I have friends who are aristocrats,” he says. “I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class.” He corrects himself. “Well, not working class.” A slightly self-deprecating smile; how could he have made such a ridiculous claim? Do the working classes even do friendship?
It was such a high bar of ludicrousness, and then Penny Mordaunt sailed over it so effortlessly. For background: in the 90s satirical comedy The Day Today, there is a short film entitled It’s Alright, to be broadcast in a time of national crisis. A union flag waves and a bulldog is shown; a Victor Meldrew-ish voice, patrician yet obscurely grumpy, talks drivel about Britain at its best while the opening bars of Another Country blare out. Mordaunt has produced the same video: the soundtrack is the same; the sentiment is the same; they might even have used the same actor. What’s going on with Mordaunt’s team? Do they hate her? Or is this a deep-state intervention?
Liz Truss’s promise of low, low taxes and high, high patriotism, delivered to a camera that was unaccountably moving from side to side, as if trying to film her and give her EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy at the same time, might have given her the edge, in so far as it carried all the same sentiments, with fractionally less of the nonsense. That was not to be, though, since, on the same day, a photo emerged – or let’s just call it The Photo. She sits in a walled garden next to an apple tree; she is wearing a grey dress that’s effectively a habit, and a scarlet coat. Her boots are workmanlike and she cradles a shining red apple. Plainly, she is straight outta The Handmaid’s Tale, but is she running as a scary aunt? Or handmaid to the country? Has the serpent been?
Against all that are Tom Tugendhat – did you know he was in the army? Has he ever mentioned that before? – and Sajid Javid, who couldn’t hope to make an impact, with their regular-guy shtick and workaday promises to create a cohesive society, full of opportunity and excellent public services, in which nobody pays any tax. Sure, it’s impossibilism, but fantasies aren’t enough for this lurid party, which henceforth will only accept a fantasy wrapped in a flag, bestride a bulldog. Maybe Grant Shapps said it best, with a pitch straight to MPs: “I can help you win your seat.” But it was nowhere near nuts enough, like taking a handheld fan to a knife fight.
The irony is that the membership they are pitching to is all in their head: Conservative members might be to the right of MPs, but only on social issues, not economic ones. So they are basically videoing these fever dreams for one another. What a time to be alive, and on Instagram.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
