26 June 2023 , 12:07
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"I want to prioritise the things that are right for the country," brays a man whose wife prioritised not paying taxes.
"I'm going to do what I think is affordable, what I think is reasonable," he laughed from his private helicopter on the way to a photoshoot with some empty promises.
"It may not always be popular in the short term," wittered the bloke who is considered by more than 50% of the country to be the worst Tory Prime Minister since the last four.
And then he tells us to "hold our nerve", as though we hadn't already noticed that he's got more of it than anyone else.
Let's go back to the reasons why Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister.
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1. He is not Boris Johnson, a man whose morality is squalid that he lied about how much he lied and then lied about lying, as well
2. He is not Liz Truss, whose touch is so deathlike it claimed the Queen within 48 hours, and then the economy
3. Er, that's it
His own party elbowed him into the post despite knowing he was richer than Croesus, and that his wife was so rich that marrying him was effectively a philanthropic act of redistribution. One which could be offset against the tax she didn't pay, thanks to the loopholes he kept open as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"Is this our plane, or one of our friends' planes?" (PA)Now we have the moral uncertainty of the post-Johnson era, as the nature of objective truth tries to reassert itself on public life, combined with the economic catastrophe curve of the post-Truss correction while the pound tries to work out if it can be bothered anymore, and the man in charge is someone who funds his own, polluting, noisy, helicopter trips to photoshoots because it saves 5 minutes going by train where he would actually be able to get some work done.
Because who needs to do work? Not he. There is so little legislation being debated that parliament is rising at 4.30pm on some days. Seeing as they don't start until lunchtime it is equivalent to phoning it in while still in your jammies.
He's hung his political hat on five "personal" pledges, and has failed on every one of them, perhaps because he has no actual idea what an NHS waiting list feels like. He likewise has no mortgage, and if his personal fortunes can withstand a loss of £500,000 a day last year as the value of shares dropped then, in all likelihood, the fact that cheese has doubled in price is going to make zero difference to the content of his sandwiches.
If the above seems a little harsh, take a look at the faces of Ikea staff who had to listen to his "Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad" last week. It's not their nerve they're trying to hold on to - it's their patience.
The government is hoping for a recession because it will make people feel more grateful to have a job. Having spent the past 6 months saying they must stick with the recommended pay rise for the public sector, they're about to spend the next 6 saying the new recommended rise is unaffordable so they won't do it.
Now the governor of the Bank of England has effectively bet the house on red and seen it come up black 13 times in a row. It's 4am, he's bankrupt, he stinks of fags and sweat and failure, and he's going to bet the last chip on red as well because he'll be right EVENTUALLY, and Sunak says the bank is "doing the right thing".
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It's the WRONG THING. A dead dog could see it's the WRONG THING. Every other developed nation on Earth whose interest rates are lower and whose inflation is lower is screaming at you it's the WRONG THING. But we're going to do it anyway, because this lot share the mindset of every other privilege-crazed king of the world who genuinely seems to think if they get on a dodgy submarine it wouldn't dare implode.
You have to ask: why is Sunak doing it?
He's not going to win. He's not got enough time to benefit from anything that would be effective. He's lost his privacy, his wife lost her non-dom status, and he's doing it all for a salary roughly equivalent to a third of his UK tax bill.
Come the election in a little over a year, he will hand over the Tory leadership, reapply for his US residency permit, and move permanently to California. Where he will have what Prince Harry doesn't - the lifelong right to 24/7 taxpayer-funded police protection, wherever he is in the world.
He will forever more be on the Privy Council, with the right to have access to the monarch or Prime Minister of the day, and be able to arrange his tax affairs in however an obscure and unscrutinised way as he pleases.
He will be invited to Davos, to G7 fringe meetings, he'll be consulted by future Tory governments and he will be able to use it all to make an absolute killing in global finance.
In his £450 Prada shoes, we too might deign to spend an hour popping to Dover in the chopper to film a clip for the 6 o'clock news. We might well think a year as PM would have long-term gains. We might even think it worth the arduous business of standing for election, learning some lies, and having people criticise our coffee mug.
All that scrutiny, for so very little time, with such massive 50-year wins, is what your average Goldman Sachs banker would call a canny investment. I would be amazed if Rishi hasn't got a spreadsheet for it, too.
He's not in this for us. He's not even in it for them. He's in it for the helicopters, and don't you kid yourself it's about anything else.