Rishi Sunak has climbed to the top of the greasy pole of politics and has been crowned the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party in London after a rather tumultuous week which saw the various divisions amongst the Tories laid bare for all to see.
He managed to see off his final challenger Penny Mordaunt prior to the 1400 BST deadline for candidates to have 100 nominations for appearing on the ballot without a fight. Her supporters consistently said she was close to the threshold even though the official number of declared nominations never breached the 30 mark.
Of course, the coronation being a rather spectacular affair was a given when former PM Boris Johnson took a flight back to London over the weekend from his holiday in the Dominican Republic to try to drum up support for him to be returned to Downing Street.
Maybe spectacular isn’t the word for this weekend…”delusional farce” seems far more like it!
It is already a laughable notion that he would be returned as Prime Minister after having triggered the summer of discontent and economic devastation by his serial inability to be conversant with the truth and flouting of pandemic rules his own government had imposed on the population at large. Add to that an active investigation into whether he’d mislead the House (spoiler alert: he has…multiple times!) and it beggars belief how anyone could have thought themselves a suitable candidate to succeed poor Liz Truss who had been put to the sword.
But given the outsized opinion Boris holds of himself and his infallibility and how crucial he is to the governing of the nation and his elitist invocation of the story of Cincinnatus in his final speech in Downing Street, I wish I could have been surprised that he’d make the succession battle all about himself.
Perhaps now he might actually stay with the plough that Cincinnatus famously retired to after his first stint as Roman Emperor after rather embarrassingly turning up in London only to take his toys and leave without contesting the leadership. And make no mistake, his assertion that he had plenty of nominations in hand even though officially he never topped 60…if he had truly had enough to go to the ballot of the MPs, he would have certainly done so because the next stage of balloting after the MPs had made their choice known was to the party at large and he holds as much sway over them as Donald Trump does the Republicans in the USA.
He would have certainly been back in Number 10 by Friday if it were left to his partisan hacks in the general population.
And that begs the real question…why in the hell would anyone (and especially Boris Johnson who is already damaged goods) want to be Prime Minister right now?
The United Kingdom is facing a wretched balance of trade thanks to the self-inflicted stupidity of Brexit and leaving the common market, soul-crushing inflation, mortgage bills and interest rates going through the roof, energy prices being capped only after a massive rise at the first of the month with massive borrowing to finance it, and a balance sheet that reads like a horror novel where the government is going to have to make massive cuts to departmental budgets and public spending which is not going to endear them to a population that is ready right now to vote Labour to a massive majority.
It used to be that the reason for being Prime Minister was that they were guaranteed to be the one member of government who couldn’t be sent to Northern Ireland where they could end their career in a blaze of glory…literally! Being Prime Minister also meant that you could avoid being Mr Killjoy the Chancellor or the Foreign Secretary who has to be nice to the foreigners that the electorate would rather you do nasty things to them! And forget being Home Secretary responsible for all of the prisons and labour strikes…no thanks!
So for all of the platitudes that “it is not the right time” and that he has “plenty to offer”, the reality is that the Party told Boris in no uncertain terms behind closed doors that they’d sooner take their chances with Rishi Sunak in the next general election rather than trust him with the levers of political power.
In the next day or so, Rishi Sunak will be invited by His Majesty the King to form a government in his name after officially accepting the resignation of Liz Truss at Buckingham Palace. Word is that the King is already on his way back from Sandringham in Norfolk on a pre-arranged trip to attend to this constitutional duty.
I think it’s safe to say that Rishi will be a very different Prime Minister than the undisputed master of bluster and bravado that was Boris Johnson and the undisputed master of political ineptitude and “deer in the headlights” aspect of Liz Truss.
He’s a relatively new MP having been first elected only seven years ago. And whilst he’s regarded as intelligent and generally well-spoken and very much on top of his brief in government (as well as the brief of others in the Cabinet, often more than the actual holder of that office), he’s also seen to be somewhat brittle and prone to anger when the spotlight is squarely upon him and the questions are coming at him fast and furious.
One of the Sky pundits in the gaggle in front of Number 10 had this to describe him after he gave a short speech at Conservative Party HQ soon after being elevated to Prime Minister-in waiting by the 1922 Committee: “a professional political robot”.
*OUCH!*
I’m sure he’ll figure out his preferred style soon enough. Goodness knows he better…presuming he kisses hands tomorrow with the King, his first Prime Minister’s Questions will be on Wednesday. PMQs is the House of Commons equivalent of throwing the Christians to the lions which is why it’s well-attended with half the chamber just waiting for the poor PM to stumble and make an error they can exploit for political gain.
Talk about a trial by fire!
Maybe Rishi Sunak will discover what his predecessors now know very well…sometimes having something isn’t such a great thing as wanting it. And just because you’ve been elevated to be Prime Minister…you’ve got far less power than you believed before you were chosen. Most of the job is having influence in an environment of collective governance that can disappear in an instant and that is the crucial difference between being a Prime Minister and being President.
Either way, the lions will be salivating mightily and that right soon! 🙂