'Abbie's right - the cost of living with Rishi Sunak is just too high'
When a single mum of two walks out of Aldi without the Christmas shop, has a tearful, sweary rant in the car park and then puts it on TikTok because WHY NOT, some people might shrug.
When she's earning a reasonable wage, and says she has £600 left each month after paying bills, a few might say that doesn't sound so bad. Ration things a bit, and you'll be fine.
But it's not what Abbie Palmer's got in her pocket that matters. It's how much she FEELS she's got in her pocket, and her video proves that Abbie feels like she's at the end of her rope.
The amount she'll have to find for her car insurance will double because she has to switch to monthly direct debits. Fuel's not getting any less, it's 7 weeks until her next pay day, and she's too ill to work but too scared to go to the doctor because she can't afford £9.65 for a prescription on top of it all.
"That's awful, but I'm on a plane to talk about climate change, does that help?" (PA)What Abbie is displaying is fear. It's the same kind of mindless terror that propels people who can't swim across the English Channel in an unseaworthy boat. There's no reasoning with it, and when one lone parent on a single income is that frightened about renewing her car insurance then you can bet your bottom dollar there are a million more terrified about mortgages, rent, council tax, electricity bills and other inescapables.
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Now let's change the person in the car. It's Rishi Sunak, the MP formerly known as the Maharajah of the Dales, and current Prime Minister of the UK. What would he say, on the same topics?
"I'm in a car! It's not my usual one. There's a seatbelt, I wonder what that does. I know where the petrol cap is, but I've no idea how I'll pay for the fuel. Will a thumbprint do? What's car insurance? What's a direct debit? What's a comparison site? My private doctor charges hundreds just for a chat, so £9.65 seems quite reasonable. Why am I at an Aldi? I'm not sure how it's any different to Waitrose. My shoes cost £600, do you like them? Oh look, there's someone over there crying."
Sunak is not terrified. He's probably never been truly scared of what life will throw at him next, because life seems to have always thrown him roses. This means he can stay completely calm and make logical decisions, such as working out that, yes, he lost £500,000 a day last year, but it was only theoretical money and there's still plenty of that left, so all is well.
It's not like he has any working class friends (PA)Abbie also has theoretical worth. To the benefits system she is worth two children and social housing. To her boss she is worth £23,500 as a customer services manager. To her children she's worth the world, and to Rishi Sunak she's worth one vote. Perhaps not even that. When she has to find £200 extra, she feels like she's on the brink.
Sunak's personal fortune dropped £200m last year, but he still has so much cash that every single day he lost more money than he is paid to be Prime Minister in a year, and it didn't change a thing. When he has to find £200, he reaches into his pocket. When he has to find £200m, he asks taxpayers like Abbie for it.
Sunak reckons he's worth a free flat in Downing Street, a free mansion at Chequers, a constituency mansion, a Chelsea townhouse, and a Californian villa. He's worth a fresh wave of Covid when he told people to Eat Out To Help Out, he's worth a gazillion tons of carbon pumped out in his jet stream as he flies to COP28, he's worth £200,000 a year staff costs for his Parliamentary office, and he's worth one pooled interview with a hand-picked journalist every other afternoon in which he will smoothly tell us how well off we are, like an estate agent trying to flog you something you can't afford.
What Abbie proves is that what no-one can afford is any more Rishi Sunak.
The Tory Party can't afford to be led by someone who disdains and despairs of everything the rest of it holds dear. The anti-migrants can't afford a Prime Minister who refuses to talk to the Greek prime minister about controlling immigration. The wealthy can't afford a man who won't cut their taxes while the poor can't afford one who won't help.
Our allies can't afford a Britain with weak leadership. Business can't afford a moneyman who has never run a business of his own, and workers can't afford to put their faith in someone to whom 'work' is being paid 365 times less than his annual stock market losses to run a country.
Abbie and other working single parents, or families on one income, can't withstand a small financial hiccup. People with two jobs can't pay the rent and eat as well, and there aren't enough hours in the day to do three. The poor are squashed, the middle class are crunched, and those with a bigger cushion are finding it shrinks, in one way or another, every day.
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If you're a racist this guy isn't for you. If you're an anti-racist he's not on your team. If you're pro-carbon or pro-climate, he's not cutting the mustard, and if you want to see a GP or a dentist, get referred for treatment in under a year or just drive down the road without hitting a pothole, then Sunak is not and has not and will not help you in the least.
He's been victim of events to some extent - a pandemic, a war, an inflation crisis. But had he known anything about how it felt to be like Abbie, he could have made all of them better, instead of worse. The cost of living now isn't the price of cheese or how much it costs to fill up the car - it's the cost of having Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, the cost to us of feeding him, fuelling him, enabling him to helicopter about in a manner which he refuses to ration in any way.
He's got a divided party, a suffering country, and a world on fire, but somehow Sunak's managed to unite everyone thinking we just can't afford any more Sunak. The only question is how long it will be before they all get a chance to tell him they're cutting back on pillocks.
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