It’s not hard to count the things that are out of Rishi Sunak’s control. He can’t really help being less popular than everyone in the Tory party except for Liz Truss. It’s not really his fault that the economy is barely out of recession. Covid, Brexit and Radon Liz (her again) have seen to that.
Nor is he wholly to blame for the NHS being on its knees. Though blocking attempts to end the doctors’ strike haven’t helped. And it’s not on him that, almost to a man and a woman, his Tory MPs are inadequate. It’s a wretched time for the Conservative gene pool.
But these days, Sunak can’t even control the things within his agency. He is a man almost entirely without political instincts; a piece of unwanted flotsam being tossed carelessly from side to side. Time and again his character is exposed and he is found wanting. Decades of inhabiting a gilded cage have turned him into an ingenu.
Someone unable to deal with the real world. Unable to respond as a human to other people’s lives – or, indeed, their tragedies. He is all at sea. His wiring is all wrong, unusable even in a faulty 1980s computer. What he is even doing in No 10 is something exercising the minds of almost every Tory MP, many of whom are actively trying to remove him. The rest have merely decided it would look even worse to get rid of him.
So Rishi gets to stay. The interim prime minister. Loved and admired by no one. Not even his cabinet colleagues. Especially his cabinet colleagues. They are the ones who get to see his shortcomings close up. The ones whose ambitions and careers are sacrificed on his altar. Whether this can last till the next election is touch and go. Because, the more we get to see of Sunak’s character, the less there is to like. And at Wednesday’s PMQs, we may just have scraped the barrel.
Keir Starmer began the session by welcoming Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna, to the public gallery. Esther wasn’t actually in her seat just yet, but she soon would be, as a guest of her local Warrington MP, Charlotte Nichols. The Labour leader spoke of his admiration for Ghey. The dignity with which she had conducted herself throughout her suffering. The generosity of her compassion for the families of her daughter’s killers.
All of this just bypassed Sunak. He wasn’t bothered. Not even enough to go through the motions of offering his own condolence. There was nothing in Brianna’s murder for him. No political advantage to be gained. So why should he be bothered? That was last week’s story. Esther Ghey should just get on with her life and leave him to get on with running the country. Watch and learn, Esther. You might even pick up a few tips.
So Sunak merely indulged in an unedifying game of political banter, one he was always going to lose anyway as his hand is so rubbish. Name us one thing that’s going well, Rishi? Oh? You can’t. But that didn’t stop Rish!. Bizarrely, he actually thinks he is good at this game. That he is a natural born winner. That he can bluff his way out of any situation. The Man with the Golden Voice.
“The Labour leader has broken every promise,” he sneered. The insistent, entitled nasal whine getting ever more high-pitched and needy. Sunak, though, was to show himself as a man of no promise. No integrity. He said Starmer couldn’t even define a woman. It was as if he was expecting a roar of approval from his own side. Which he got from his own frontbench. The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, roared with laughter, slapping her thigh. It seems there’s nothing she likes more than an anti-trans joke. If she had any self-respect, she wouldn’t show her face in public for weeks.
Starmer was understandably outraged. On this, of all days. Was it really the time to be making transphobic gags? When the mother of a murdered trans teenager was in the chamber. He offered Sunak the chance to apologise. But Rish! knew no shame. Saw no reason to say sorry. People like him don’t go round apologising to working-class women from Warrington. She wasn’t even a millionaire. Hell, Ghey should be the one showing gratitude to him. After all he had done. Seldom, if ever, can a prime minister have made quite such a spectacle of himself during PMQs.
Weirdly, it’s not even as if Sunak is personally much of a transphobe. He’s almost certainly never given the issue much thought. It’s just that he’s pathetically needy for the approval of all the culture war Tories on the far right. Craven even.
He will do and say anything to get their attention. To win a few cheap laughs. Join the attacks on minorities. Blame the elites. I guess Goldman Sachs doesn’t count. Because at heart, Rish! has no convictions beyond his own short-term survival. Nothing in which he believes. He is, as Tony Blair said of John Major, “Weak, weak, weak.”
The Labour MP Liz Twist later gave Sunak another chance to apologise. To even acknowledge Ghey’s presence. Starmer pointed up to the gallery. But Sunak still couldn’t bring himself to do it. Couldn’t admit that he had made a mistake. At heart, he has the mind of a child. Unable to do the right thing. He thinks he’s being tough when everyone else sees frailty. A Man of No Quality. Finally, after one of his advisers had got a message to him that even his own team thought he looked shit, Sunak mumbled a quick non-apology right at the end of the session. Too little, too late.
This wasn’t the first time Sunak’s character defects had been shown up this week. There was also the £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan over the deportation of refugees. Because having a punt over other people’s suffering is what you would expect of any prime minister. Why not make a £1,000 bet on when Brianna’s killers get out?
Rish! has tried to laugh off the bet. To make out that he had been bullied into it by Morgan. That he couldn’t wriggle out of it. Except he could have done. No one has to do whatever a narcissist tells you to do in the course of an interview. You don’t have to kneel before whatever a fool with a massive ego and little else tells you to do. Try it. Morgan is surprisingly thin-skinned. He can’t take criticism. Sunak could try calling him out. And Morgan’s boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Except Sunak couldn’t. He was bound to make the bet. Because that’s who he is. So, naturally enough, Starmer also played on that weakness at PMQs. Rish! had no reply. He had been shown up. The Emperor with No Clothes. This is who he is. Time for a darkened room. How much longer can this go on?
