Well that didn’t last long. Admittedly the knives were out for Liz Truss before she had even drawn breath. She was so clearly a disaster just waiting to happen. But even so, Rishi Sunak thought his period of grace would last longer than a week. Already he is looking weak and out of touch. A bit needy and desperate. Someone who’d do almost anything not just to be loved – that’s too much to ask – but to be taken as seriously as he so clearly takes himself.
Then, Sunak is his own worst enemy. It’s hard to be Gagging for Rish!, as Rish! implored us to be, when you’re not even sure what Rish! you’re supposed to be gagging for. Librium Liz became an object of ridicule for endlessly changing her mind on almost everything, but Rish! is also turning out to be a master of the U-turn.
In less than two weeks, Sunak has ripped up his own songbook. He’s gone back on his fracking pledge that would have made the UK the earthquake capital of the world. He’s completely forgotten he once had the idiot idea of fining people with no money £10 for missing doctors’ appointments. He’s pretended he never said anything about reviewing EU retained law within his first 100 days – that one lasted barely 100 hours.
On Wednesday morning, Rish! was at it again. Having insisted he was far too busy raising taxes and cutting public services to be arsed to go to Egypt for Cop27, he decided that he could maybe fit in something to do with the climate crisis after all. But only after he had been shamed into going by Boris Johnson, who wasn’t about to turn down a chance to make Rish! look stupid.
It’s hard to imagine a moral multiverse in which the Convict has the high ground. But Sunak somehow found one.
If that wasn’t a bad enough look, Rish! now declared he was immune from any further U-turns because he’d never meant any of his former promises in the first place. Any connection between what he might have said and what he might now say at some time in the future would be entirely coincidental.
There was no causal or correlative link. Just two separate space-time continuums in which all outcomes were possible. It wasn’t that he had abandoned the summer manifesto. It was just that he had abandoned a summer manifesto. He was now on the manifesto of the road less travelled. He was now the Tories’ pet homeopath. Not only running on fumes but on the memory of a manifesto that may or may not have existed. Whether or not it had ever been real was just an individual choice.
So no wonder the cheers that greeted Rish!’s arrival for his second prime minister’s questions were underwhelming at best. Just a few grunts from the Conservatives’ collective memory bank. No one was in any hurry to use up too much goodwill. Not when no one can be entirely confident that he will still be in No 10 for a third PMQs. Things move at lightning speed in the modern Tory party. Careers crash and burn in a heartbeat. There again, when you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.
But the few grunts of approval were about as good as it got for Rish!. His first question came from Labour’s Meg Hillier. Sunak had promised to govern with integrity, professionalism and accountability. How did he square that with a home secretary who had broken the law? Er … he didn’t. Instead he insisted Suella Braverman had given a full explanation for why she had screwed up – this was news to most of us – and had promised she would do better next time. Fingers crossed and all that.
Keir Starmer was in no mood to take prisoners. He ripped into Sunak from the word go. Braverman had said the asylum system was broken. So who broke it? He could also have said that two years previously Priti Patel had also said the asylum system was broken. But he chose to keep things simple. No point in overwhelming Rish! with too much information.
Even so, this was all a bit too much for Sunak. For a while it was as though he had forgotten he was supposed to be answering the questions. Not in the sense of giving a coherent reply obviously – that would be too much to ask – but in actually saying something. Actual words. Any words. Even a word salad would have been less humiliating than the silence we got for the first five seconds.
“Um …,” said Rish! eventually. “But Brexit. You wanted to stay in the EU.” What this had to do with anything was totally unclear. Even some of Sunak’s few remaining fans on the frontbenches looked a bit bewildered. No one had ever claimed that illegal migration was part of the remain deal.
It was all downhill from there on. The Labour leader kept up a rapid-fire attack on the government’s immigration policy. Such as it is. Rish! just squeaked in a high-pitch nervy monotone. Leaky Sue was doing a brilliant job in processing even 4% of the asylum claims. No one could possibly do better.
Sooner or later Sunak is going to come to the conclusion that there may be better ways of spending his Wednesday lunchtimes than defending his home secretary. But for now he’s honouring the grubby deal that got him elected as leader of the party and is struggling to find more imaginative ways of saying she’s not just useless but a political liability with it.
By the end of his exchanges with Starmer, he could only eke out the odd “but Corbyn” response. It hadn’t been that effective when he tried it last week; now it just sounded feeble. Sad, even.
Ian Blackford took up the attack. But Rish! couldn’t remember what he had promised and to whom. In a future timezone he might have promised to keep the pension triple lock, but there could equally be another reality where he hadn’t. Before long, even Sunak’s own MPs were getting in on the act. Julian Lewis wanted reassurances on mortgages and Scott Benton was furious about uncontrolled immigration.
Rish! looked as miserable as his own party felt. When the Tories are getting hammered on immigration, the game is pretty much up. Sunak was brought in to manage the decline. To limit the losses at the next election. He was seen as the most competent idiot around. The Goldman Sachs technocrat. Only, the whole point of a technocrat is that they are meant to be good at doing something. So far, Rish! has been for very little. Just an ontological anomaly. Onwards and backwards.
A year in Westminster with John Crace and Marina Hyde: join John Crace and Marina Hyde for a look back at another chaotic year in Westminster, live at Kings Place in London, or via the livestream, on Wednesday 7 December, 7pm–8.15pm GMT. Book tickets via theguardian.com/guardianlive
