It came billed as a landmark speech. Another one. And in a sense it was. Though not in the way that Rishi Sunak would have wanted. The landmark was merely a new low. The last throw of the dice from a desperate man. The prime minister who can’t buy a break. A sad mini-man howling into the wind.
Hard to believe that Rish! has only been in Downing Street just over 18 months. Because in that time he’s had at least seven relaunches, each one less successful than the last. There’s only so many times you can try to win over an uninterested public before you have to accept that the product is a dud.
But Sunak is nothing if not a trier. It offends his idea of the natural order for him to be ignored. That it is a failure of the British people not to be more grateful; to not appreciate the sacrifices he has made for them. So he finds himself giving the UK one last chance. No one believed in him as the change prime minister. Maybe, then, they will accept him as the man for a crisis. The tough guy for tough times.
Only it’s hard to think that even Rish! really believes in himself any more. There are limits to even his sense of entitlement. Because right from the start of his Monday morning speech at the rightwing Policy Exchange thinktank in Westminster, Sunak’s heart didn’t appear to be in it.
His delivery was leaden and disengaged. Not even a hint of his trademark nasal whine to liven it up. It was like listening to a chatbot plodding its way through a speech knocked up by a third-rate AI program. “Siri, write me a speech in the style of an 11-year old Downing Street special adviser. Something with no intellectual or emotional coherence. Something that is effortlessly circular and repetitive. A speech that could have been wrapped up in five minutes but is dragged out to half an hour.”
“We have a choice between the future and the past,” Rish! began. And if you thought the past was bad, then just wait to see what the future had in store. There were many evil empires out there. North Korea, Russia, Iran and China – just wait till he catches up with that David Cameron character who spent years cosying up to Beijing. Enter the Rishster! The man with the superpowers.
It was at about this point – less than 30 seconds in – that you could see some heads start to go down. Diehard Tories would have to look elsewhere for the miracle cure. Because it wasn’t hard to make the connections that were beyond Sunak’s own synapses. Such as, who had been running the country while the entire world was apparently falling apart? And why would anyone in their right mind want to trust for another five years a government that had fucked things up so badly that we were now all in mortal danger?
Rish! now had a delusional conceptual leap. What had Labour been doing for the last 14 years? Er … they had been in opposition. One of the downsides of not being in government is you don’t get to run the country. But Sunak was adamant that Keir Starmer had been secretly running a government in exile, which is why the UK was on its knees. And if he was allowed to become prime minister, then everyone in the country would die. We could measure out the rest of our lives in a matter of hours.
By now everyone had given up trying to make sense of this stream of unconsciousness. It would have been an act of extreme futility. So instead everyone zoned out, texting their safe words to loved ones and hoping to make it out of the room alive. We mustn’t despair, Sunak insisted. That would play into the hands of our enemies.
Try not to focus on the fact that the UK has cut its military and policing personnel since 2010. Or that defence spending is still lower. Count yourself lucky that we have a colossus, Grant Shapps, as defence secretary. AKA the Joker. Other countries might laugh at him – hell, we might laugh at him – but name one other minister who was four people rolled into one. Grant, Michael, Sebastian and Corinne: take a bow. The Russians would kill for such versatility.
Not so long ago, Rish! had made a point of dismissing the efforts of previous Tory prime ministers. They had all failed dismally. At worst inconsequential, at best outright dangerous. But he was the Tory to make good the Tory chaos. Now we had a different vision. It had been a cunning plan all along. Even Liz Truss.
You might have just imagined you were broke, couldn’t afford the mortgage and were number 7,658,204 on the NHS waiting list. The reality was that the Tories had deliberately run the country into the ground, because it’s only then that genuine progress could be made. Though no need to worry about climate change, as we’d all be dead long before 2030.
And Rish! had seen such wondrous visions. A world of wealth and contentment. He would personally cure cancer. That was a promise. Better still, we would win Eurovision for the next 10 years. No nul points in the popular vote for us again.
“Just remember,” Sunak concluded. A last gasp of gibberish as he cut the final cord to reality. “The world is terrible. And it’s going to get worse. A vote for Labour is signing the global death warrant.” Unbelievably, about six people actually applauded this crap. Possibly the worst speech a British prime minister had given since the last one.
But Rish! was in a generous mood. He would take questions from the Sun, the Telegraph and the Mail. Along, reluctantly, with a few from the broadcast media. Now he lost the plot entirely. Just lapsed into free association. Forgetting even that he was the prime minister and was using a government platform for party political gain.
He definitely had not said the things everyone had heard him say, he insisted. He was going to win the election just as soon as Labour stopped playing games and named the date. And when that election came, he was more than happy to debate anyone.
Just know this. Anyone who dared to disagree with him would be locked up as a suspected terrorist. He’d had enough of these Labour and Lib Dem extremists. Was there time for a question from the Guardian? There wasn’t. The world just wasn’t safe enough for that. Rish! scuttled back to Downing Street. To lie back and wait for the white heat of a nuclear explosion.
