California dreaming. Ever since he’d returned from holiday in Santa Monica Rishi Sunak had been overwhelmed with a sense of despair. A futility no number of sessions on his Peloton could erase. He was meant to be living his best life. The tech-bro turned prime minister. The man who fell to Earth to save the UK from Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Where was the gratitude for all he had done? At best, the country was totally indifferent to his efforts. At worst it was hostile.
Now he was reduced to ever more meaningless photo ops with people bewildered to know why he was there. It wasn’t as if he had anything new to say. How much longer could he go on announcing things that were probably never going to happen? Even he was struggling to believe in himself. Even he could see he was at his best when he was doing nothing. The invisible man.
Maybe he should just give up and wait for the inevitable at next year’s general election. It was so draining fighting the tide. Always having to look happy. As if he actually cared. It wasn’t meant to be this way. He had had the whole summer planned. And yet the world had refused to bend to his will. That had never happened before. It was all most unsettling. Was he losing his touch? Losing his religion. Surely not. It must be the country that was out of sync. Not him.
Rish! kicked off his trainers and stared out of the window of his Downing Street office. He could feel the anger building up inside. Every effort to command the news agenda had backfired. He had started with a “stop the boats” week. That would surely get him some good headlines. Apparently not.
All that anyone could now remember was that the idiotic Suella Braverman wanted to send some refugees to Ascension Island. He had never really wanted her as home secretary anyway and had hoped Robert Jenrick might keep her in check. His bad. He had forgotten just how useless Honest Bob really was. Good for people pleasing and not much else. He should have remembered his only real achievement in government had been to grant planning permission to a Tory pornographer donor so Dirty Richard Desmond could avoid a tax bill.
Then there had been the disaster of the Bibby Stockholm. First it had lain empty for weeks on end and then, no sooner had the first refugees been installed on board they had to be removed. Honest Bob had one job: to make sure the barge had a health and safety certificate. To make matters worse, the health secretary had insisted that legionella wasn’t a health issue. Christ, he’d get rid of Steve Barclay if he possibly could. The trouble was that he had already filled his cabinet with halfwits. After that, he was down to the quarter-wits on the back benches.
Even his pièce de résistance of threatening to leave the European Convention of Human Rights had landed badly. Rish! could have sworn most people hated refugees enough to go for that. But no. It turned out that most of the country felt quite attached to basic principles of international decency. How misguided can you get? Where was the excitement of joining Russia and Belarus outside the ECHR? What was wrong with people?
Next up had been health week. His announcement of 900 new beds to cope with the 7m backlog of hospital appointments should have been a slam dunk. Instead, people had just wanted to know where the money was going to be found to staff these beds. Talking Britain down again. Why do you even need staff? Everyone should learn to stand on their own feet in hospital. Not be waited on hand and foot by doctors and nurses. The rest of health week was best forgotten. Rish! certainly had.
And what about the economy? Surely he deserved credit for that. Much to his surprise it looked as if he might achieve the inflation target that had looked easily achievable when he had made it. “Hooray,” Jeremy Hunt had said. “Prices are finally coming down at last.” Sunak had groaned at that. Having an economically illiterate chancellor could be a burden at times. He had had to inform him that the things people couldn’t afford now would just become more unaffordable a little more slowly.
“Never mind,” Jezza had declared. “At least our plan is working.” Except it wasn’t. The fall in inflation had nothing to do with the government, something the electorate had long since realised. But, hey, we could all celebrate the fact the economy had grown by 0.2% and we might avoid a recession. Let the good times roll.
By now Rish! was in a major sulk. Refusing to admit that the government’s education week really was an education week. Largely because even he could see there was no point in making a bad situation worse. “I know,” Gillian Keegan had said. “Why don’t we just tell everyone there’s no point working hard for A-levels and GCSEs as they are a waste of time? And those morons who do go on to university are getting a bargain by ending up £50K in debt.” Hmm.
To cap it all, the England Women’s football team had lost the final of the World Cup. Rish! had been looking forward to taking all the credit for that. It would have been the one undisputed success of his Conservative government. The Lionesses would have been thrilled to have been photographed with him at No 10. They should be so lucky.
Maybe he would just have a reception for them anyway and hope no one noticed they were runners-up. James Cleverly wouldn’t. He’d been thrilled to go to Sydney for the weekend. The foreign secretary was never happier than when turning left for first-class on a long-haul flight. Ideally he’d live the rest of his life in a seat that collapsed into a bed.
Rish! stared at his iPhone. Hoping for inspiration. So much for his summer reset. Now all he could look forward to was a party conference where most of his MPs were contemplating the loss of their seats within a year. That’s what he called leadership. Well, sod his party and sod the country. If they didn’t appreciate him, they could do one. In a year or so he would be a free man again. California dreaming.
Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
