In running his leadership like a corporate takeover bid, he looked like a man willing to say absolutely anything to win
Rishi Sunak is not having a good time. And it’s not just because he’s losing. It’s because, in general, he’s just not very good at it. And by “it”, I mean the human bit of politics, the part where he connects with people as something other than economic units. His campaign, if polling is to be believed, is soon to come to an unsuccessful end. Lowlights include multiple moments in which Sunak attempted to be a man of the people: failing to pay for fuel, failing to name a real McDonald’s breakfast item, joking about his “tan”, and a campaign video (with a Ray Winstone-meets-Danny Dyer voiceover hailing Sunak as the underdog of some kind of action film) so removed from the grave moment the country finds itself in that it verges on sociopathic.
It’s all now a far cry from the boy wonder, the Sunak the BBC portrayed in a Superman outfit (an image so craven that the corporation was forced to remove it), the Sunak as prime minister-in-waiting, who emerged mid-pandemic with buckets of cash and a furlough scheme. Sunak materialised at a moment when large numbers of people, both conservative and liberal, were so desperate for a grown up they were happy with someone who merely appeared to be one, no matter what his politics. To some, he promised the end of the wild Brexit years of reckless bluster; he was the pilot who was going to land the plane safely. He was “dishy Rishi” who presented, despite his very rightwing politics, as not too Tory, a little bit Blair and a whole lot of brown. That last fact – that he seemed to have the potential to be the first prime minister who was also a person of colour – sprinkled even more stardust on him.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
