If at first you don’t succeed … For his first few months as prime minister, Rishi Sunak’s minders have tried to keep him away from the public as much as possible. The submarine commander. Leading us to victory from beneath the waves. Or not. Because it turns out that you can dislike what you don’t see. Rish!’s attempts to steady the economy and resolve the strikes have been met with at first scepticism and then incredulity. The man sold to us as a competent tech bro, the management consultant for all seasons, was yet another Tory dud. Not much better than Liz Truss or Boris Johnson.
So, just a few months in, it’s time for a relaunch. Sunak 2.0. Rish! is to be uncaged. To be let loose among his people. On a tour optimistically called PMConnect. Except the prime minister can barely connect with himself, let alone the rest of the country. So more like PMDisconnect. There’s a gaping void between him and the country. And how could there not be? The whole point of being part of the megarich is not having to engage with the little people. To immunise yourself from the day-to-day stresses of ordinary life. Rish! can no more suddenly decide he wants to spend time among us than we can share his cushioned lifestyle.
His awkwardness with people is painful to watch. His desperation to be thought normal comes across as inappropriate eagerness and enthusiasm. A knot of need that can never be fully met. He barks “Sir” or “Ma’am” to people like an American chatshow host. Always talking down. Manufactured intimacy, masquerading as sincerity. Yet we’re in for much more of this. Sunak’s handlers have decided he needs to get out more – to be seen – and, in a final throw of the dice in what is now an 18-month general election campaign, have sent him out on a soapbox permatour, coming to a town near you.
Baby steps, though. Team Sunak aren’t completely stupid. They know their man has a problem with people. A lack of basic emotional intelligence. So they’ve chosen to make life easy for him. By only sending him out in front of home audiences for now. Places where he is assured of a good reception and will get an easy ride. From people who have been paid to love him. Literally.
For the first sighting of PMDisconnect, Rish! flew up to Lancashire to visit a former railway station in Morecambe that had been converted into an arts centre. On the day the government had announced that Morecambe had won a £50m government grant in the second round of the levelling up fund bidding. No wonder the few dozen people who had been allowed into the venue were so thrilled to see the prime minister. Hell, he could come every week if he promised to bring £50m of local investment every time.
Rish! removed his jacket and headed for the front. Stripped and ripped. Inaction Man. How could he help? Did anyone have questions for him? Er … not really. It could have been a shareholders’ sleepy AGM, only at least at those you get the odd tricky customer. Here, all anyone wanted to do was lovebomb the prime minister. Would he like to tell us how wonderful he was? And why he was so right to give Morecambe £50m? How could the process not have been transparent and fair if the good guys were winning?
“I believe in action and accountability,” said Sunak. You could feel him wanting to fall deep into the audience’s eyes. He pointed to his five pledges, printed on the backdrop. Reduce inflation? He’d done that already. Though all economists agreed that inflation would be coming down even if he’d done nothing. Hospital waiting lists down. He’d done that, too. Though down by the merest fraction from more than 7 million. Winning with Rish!. He might as well have promised to keep Christmas Day on 25 December.
Things became rather more awkward when Sunak took questions from the media. Though he must have been hoping for another easy ride as the only questions he took from the print media were from the Tory-friendly Sun and Mail. But even they had had enough of playing softball. Too claggy. Too fake.
ITV got things going. Wasn’t the levelling up a bit of a sham? Loads of money going to the south to prop up the Tory vote? Hunger Games-style bidding war pitting council against council? £27m of public money wasted in bidding wars? No joined-up government? Money just a partial refund on budget cuts over the past 13 years? Rish! was outraged. He had made sure his own wealthy constituency had been successful. He was a hands-on prime minister.
Sunak went on to declare that anyone who thought tax cuts were imminent were idiots. Nice to know what he thinks of half the Tory party. And he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about him taking another private jet. His carbon footprint had been more than offset by the net zero bid he’d awarded to Blackpool. With that he was off to Hartlepool. To have more non-conversations with people he didn’t care much about.
Back in London, the junior levelling up minister Lucy Frazer was having a far more uncomfortable time in the Commons as she was forced to answer an urgent question on the cash distribution, with Michael Gove having declared himself awol. He literally had one job … Still, I’m sure he sent a reassuring message to Frazer, who crashed and burned while making no secret of the fact she would rather be elsewhere.
Nor did she really bother to conceal the fact that the funding mechanisms were hopelessly flawed and open to political gaming. Like many ministers, she appears already to have given up and be planning her next move. Rather, she just went through the motions as Labour took her apart and many of her own MPs from constituencies that had been unsuccessful in the bidding process expressed their reservations about the system.
But there’s always Tory Harriett Baldwin. She couldn’t have been happier that her constituency had got lucky. People should stop moaning because they lost out, she said. Instead, they should take some responsibility, roll up their sleeves and prepare better bids next time. That’s telling them, Harriett.
