A tasteful selection of French pastries, a perfectly arranged bowl of berries and a shelf lined with the works of Yotam Ottolenghi – the country’s first look at Rishi Sunak’s kitchen in the flat above 10 Downing Street was a picture of the bourgeois idyll.
In this not quite fly-on-the-wall documentary from ITV, the domestic bliss seems a little curated but it does capture a side to him not often seen or heard.
Chatting with his two daughters over the breakfast table, trying to persuade them to watch his favourite sport (cricket), the PM’s voice is markedly more relaxed and casual than the CBeebies presenter diction he adopts in speeches. His face too is finally rid of the unconvincing perma-smirk he usually adopts in public.
Yes, if this documentary had one success for the PM’s image it was showing that, regardless of politics, he is a nice person at the interpersonal level. And, though not totally resigned to defeat, he has a more healthy attitude to the ups and downs of politics than many of his predecessors. “None of these things last forever,” he tells interviewer Anushka Asthana when she asks about the Conservatives’ terrible polling.
Asthana, a former newspaper journalist now at ITV, is an amiable presence and throughout the documentary Sunak – who is not generally a fan of spontaneous interactions with the media – seems pretty relaxed about her following him around as he makes breakfast, rehearses speeches and goes to campaign events.
Her friendly approach gives her the leeway to push the PM at times, with some revealing results. Pressing on the question of huge NHS waiting lists, Sunak gives the odd excuse that “it’s disappointing to me that it hasn’t been resolved quicker” – isn’t he the one in charge? And at another point she gets him on the ropes about his relationship with Boris Johnson. Under the pressure of questioning, Normal Rishi gives way to CBeebies Sunak and he delivers a series of weird, unnatural sentences such as “I speak to him on an occasion”. Everyone knows about their barely concealed contempt for each other since the disastrous end of Johnson’s premiership that Sunak helped to bring about. Why lie?
Asthana, who has Indian heritage like Sunak, also takes the rare opportunity to ask the PM about the racism he faced growing up. In an affecting moment, he recalls growing up in the 1980s when stinging racist insults were a matter of course. He also reveals that his mother sent him to acting lessons so he could develop a quintessentially British accent that would help him to fit in.
Other highlights include an interview with Sunak’s cousin, a doctor, who reveals the PM’s massive geekery (he’s a huge Star Wars fan), and a look at the suburban street in Southampton where the cricket-mad Sunak used a lamppost as a stump when he was a lad. Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty, who knows him best, appears all too briefly. Her contribution is limited to a little breakfast conversation and some praise for the quality of the cooked English breakfast her husband prepares for the family on most weekends.
Politically though, the documentary gives little sense of what motivates Sunak or even of what he would hope to achieve if he shocked us all and won the election. Some interspersed clips from talking heads attempt to establish some context, but provide nothing new. A minute is entirely wasted interviewing Claire Coutinho, one of Sunak’s closest allies in Cabinet, who – surprise, surprise – praises him and plays down reports of plots to oust him. It might have been better if ITV had waited to do this documentary after the next election, when in all likelihood, Sunak will have much less ostensibly to lose.
That kitchen is likely to be home to Keir Starmer’s family in a year’s time and Sunak seems to have acknowledged this, at least to himself. After leaving Downing Street, he tells Asthana, he will spend more time with his daughters. If it does come down to a crushing Tory defeat at the election, this emotionally robust family man will probably take it gracefully.
