The Sunak Question

Why Has the Tory Party's Great Hope Been So Bad At the Job?

Rishi Sunak looks up to Paul Kagame, the authoritarian president of Rwanda. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images.

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Spare a thought for the pundits. Anyone who commentates on British politics for a living must have had a hard time the last couple of years. There has been a distinct lack of narrative development. The Tory government is irretrievably broken, and Labour is on course to win the next election, without inspiring much enthusiasm. That’s really all there is to say, and it’s been said to death. The press has valiantly tried to wring some drama out of this stasis, but essentially it’s Waiting For Godot without the humour or the mystery.

Rishi Sunak has provided the one surprise of this whole period, by under-performing what were already low expectations. He has played a terrible hand abysmally. He’s now the only interesting question left; the question being, why is he so incredibly bad at his job? How did he turn out to be worse at it than nearly every political observer predicted? How did he go from being the party’s greatest talent to a leader who has increased the likelihood that the Tories will literally be ended at the next election?

We need to talk about Rishi, but first, let’s remind ourselves of how it came to this, while filling in those of you who may not have been following this country’s queasy political comedy.