things can only get wetter
After several weeks of telling people that the election would be “in the second half of this year”, Sunak surprised everyone by announcing it for the first week of that second half - on 4 July, during Wimbledon fortnight and in the middle of the Euros, perhaps hoping most voters will forget it’s taking place.
I think he can’t wait to get out of here - a nice summer break and time to find a school for the kids in California, and he can start his new techbro job in September. It’s been obvious for a while that Sunak hates his job.
He seems bemused by his massive unpopularity. His net rating of -59 is level with the all-time record low for a Prime Minister with Ipsos set by John Major in August 1994, though Liz Truss was -70 on a YouGov poll when she prime minister. Presumably she was not there long enough for Ipsos to get round to doing a poll on her.
People remark constantly on his tetchy demeanour in interviews - “tetchbro” has stuck. He doesn’t like tough questions and only selects friendly journalists to ask questions at press conferences - he has names and photos of friendly journalists in front of him when speaking (Daily Mail, Sun, BBC). When he went to Vienna this week he only took the Daily Mail and GB News with him. It is a new and cowardly development in British politics.
It does not bode well for the six week general election campaign, when he is going to be subjected to plenty of difficult questions and plenty of heckling. Even during today’s announcement outside number 10 Downing Street, Sunak was almost drowned out by someone playing D:Ream’s “Things can only get better” - this was Labour’s campaign song in 1997 when they had a landslide victor after 18 years of Tory government. He ploughed doggedly on, ignoring it - it’s not in his nature to be able to ad lib a joke or a put-down in moments like these - and of course British people over-valuing a sense of humour as they do it would have been worth a number of approval rating percentage points if he had managed to come up with something - e.g. “would you mind turning your music down young man I’m trying to say something important here” or perhaps a self-deprecatory “things can only get wetter”, as the rain cascaded down on his blue suit. It was a horrible end-of-days image for him and his party.
Standing in the rain is a difficult one to get right. Many years ago, England’s football manager stood watching his team fail to qualify for the Euros and was ridiculed as..
and a version of Rihanna’s Umbrella appeared as a sardonic tribute to him.
I am sure Rishi and his team agonised over umbrella or no umbrella - it would be awkward for him to hold it and still concentrate on his speech with his trademark “why me?” expression of a dog being locked in the kitchen by his owner, when he could be bounding along Santa Monica beach in the glorious sunshine.
It would not have been a good look either for him to have an umbrella holder or two by the side of him - he is continually criticised for being too wealthy and out of touch so this would have looked like he had commanded a couple of his servants to get drenched for him.
In the end the team went for man of the people Rishi, able to put up with a bit of good honest British rain. Unfortunately for him the rain intensified during his speech and he ended up looking soggy and ridiculous.
“Rishi can’t control the weather” said a commentator, but he did have absolute control over when he made this announcement. Surely he could have picked a time when it was sunny? Actually no - 2024 Britain is trapped in a Blade Runner-like permanent rainscape and so in fact Rishi’s opportunities to give the speech in a non-precipitation scenario were vanishingly small.
Sunak started his speech by looking back to the days at the start of the pandemic when he was Chancellor, lavishing money on everyone with his furlough scheme and his Eat Out to Help Out scheme in the summer of 2020. In those days “dishy Rishi” was popular (+43 approval rating). In fact, Britain spent more than other European countries on the pandemic and despite that spending suffered the biggest drop in GDP in the G7. Rishi’s eat out to help out scheme led to an explosion of COVID cases and was castigated by government health advisers, bypassed by Johnson and Sunak when the scheme was introduced, who called it the “eat out to help out the virus” scheme. Then to cap it all Sunak got fined by police for being at one of Boris Johnson’s numerous parties in breach of their own COVID rules.
So he didn’t do a very good job during the pandemic at all but in Sunak’s re-telling he had single-handedly saved the country. His words were Churchillian, delivered like a school prefect reading out new fire regulations. “I have never and will never leave the people of this country to face the darkest of days alone”, he read, though rather mucked it up by adding “and you know that, because you’ve seen it”. Churchill missed a trick - it could have been “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few - and you know that, because you’ve seen it”.
The rest of his speech was a battle against D:Ream and the rain, but he did land one effective blow on Starmer, saying of him; “If he was happy to abandon all the promises he made to become Labour leader once he got the job, how can you know that he won’t do exactly the same thing if he were to become prime minister?” He has got a point. He finished rather oddly without saying thank you, turning away from the lectern in silence and shuffling bedraggledly back into number 10.
Starmer was ready within an hour with a speech to launch his campaign, and it was pretty good - he ended with “on the 4th of July you have the choice - and together we can stop the chaos, we can turn the page, we can start to rebuild Britain and change our country, thank you ”. Easier said than done, mate - I suppose “start” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence - but it’s a message that resonates strongly given Britain’s manifold challenges at the moment. In probably the best part of his speech Starmer spoke convincingly of his commitment to public service. I have no doubt that he means what he says. Most but not all prime ministers are motivated by a desire to be of service to their country and to make it a better place (Johnson was not one of these). Some (Johnson, Blair, Cameron) are also interested in the money and the high life that accompanies the role. Most are extremely ambitious, and for some, once they have got there they are not quite sure what to do. Just getting there was the point - Johnson again.
I put Sunak in this last category - a glitteringly successful life to date, determined to go to the top. But when he got there, it wasn’t really clear why he was there at all and what he wanted to do, apart from gradually stopping people smoking over the next 80 or so years. By anyone’s standards, it’s a pretty meagre legacy.
I think Sunak wants the love and affirmation but not the job. Best scenario for him would be a public that personally adored him but narrowly rejected his party for reasons beyond his personal control (e.g Partygate, Liz Truss, the disaster of Brexit , cost of living crisis, sewage in rivers and on beaches, overcrowded prisons, 3 year court delays, rising crime, housing crisis, record NHS waiting lists, record poverty, record exclusion numbers from schools, record immigration, record numbers of “boats” not stopped, 4 week waits for doctor’s appointments. 10 hour waits for ambulances - that sort of thing).
But Sunak is even more unpopular than his party. Starmer is too (-26) but things look grim for the Conservatives right now - polling at 23% against Labour’s 45%. They say that anything could happen in a 6 week campaign though I suspect that a very happy Sunak family will be on that plane to California before Wimbledon is over.