Now if he turned up in work boots, overalls and maybe a donkey jacket - that would be funny.
The fact that Rishi is completely minted is an issue in class obsessed Britain, for sure. But that can be easily turned around given that most people recognise that financial competence is an essential requirement for a PM given the economic problems facing the country. He is unlikely to peddling influence for gifts from businessmen and dodgy Russian oligarchs as Boris Johnson was wont to do.
Rishi looks like an accountant and that is probably good thing.
His fabulously wealthy wife and in-laws will probably attract more attention. The newshounds will be stalking them for any kind of sensation, for sure.
His height is variously reported as 5’ 6" and 5’ 5", which is short by UK standards. He also has a fairly slight build, which probably intensifies the impression.
That’ll be the same Rishi Sunak who wrote off billions in fraud and signed off billions more in dodgy government contracts to friends, family and donors of the Tory Party? The idea that rich people are somehow less likely to be corrupt and self-serving is not borne out by millennia of evidence to the contrary.
There’s also the famous Kia incident, where he borrowed a car from a Sainsbury’s worker for a photo op:
That Sunak is more competent and less venal than his two predecessors is technically true, in the same way that it’s also true that he’s kinder than Stalin. The bar has now been buried so low it’s floating in the earth’s mantle somewhere.
Somehow I don’t think he would have lasted long if he had not signed off on those deals. Johnson and his chums were quite keen to manage the finances to their advantage and no Chancellor was going to stop them. When a national emergency looms, normal controls are relaxed and the nations cookie jar opens. Then there is scramble by opportunists to provide instant solutions for a financial premium. So it was with 9/11 and Covid certainly had its share of opportunists and scammers.
However, Sunak is now leader of the Conservative party, the Prime Minister and he has the authority to institute reforms of the party. Goodness knows in its current state it is barely functional.
I am going to reserve judgement on Sunak, he has a difficult and challenging job to do sorting out the economic mess. But he seems shrewd and competent and a cut above the shower that have had control of the party so far. But yes, it is a low bar.
To be honest, I might have agreed with that assessment and reserved judgment if he hadn’t re-appointed Braverman, a big red flag that we would be getting more of the same.
He was also a big part of the lockdown conversations about free school meal funding during holidays which went something like:
Marcus Rashford And Others: If you don’t provide out-of-term support for these kids they’ll go hungry
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak: Nah.
MRAO: Seriously, this is going to be a big problem
CX RS: No, absolutely definitely not, our mind is made up, we’ve done enough. No way, no how, won’t happen.
Policitcal commentators: This is a bad move by the government and Rishi Sunak, it will hurt them politicall for very little economic benefit.
MRAO: You are putting an enormous amount of political capital into letting kids go hungry. Are you sure this is they way you want to play this?
CX RS: We’re good thanks. We will not extend the free school meal scheme, that would be bad and we are prepared to be unpopular about this for the sake of sound stewardship of the British economy.
Political commentators: Rishi Sunak and the governmetn will definitely U-turn on this, they cannot possibly hold this line.
MRAO, plus a lot of ordinary people: What the fuck, this is really bad, what are you doing?
CX RS: No, no, no no no.
CX RS: We have decided to extend the free school meal scheme.
As ever, the problem is not the U-turn. Doing the U-turn is being right. The problem was the long period of being wrong and unpopular, insisting on not changing their mind long after it was obvious they would have to change their mind. Thus they got to build a reputation as being uncaring and got minimal benefit from doing the right thing.
Keeping control of a faction ridden party like the Conservatives requires political tactics. The Home Office is the natural home of tbe right wingers and their headline grabbing schemes. The party members love all that ‘Hang’ em, Shoot ‘em, Flog’ em stuff. But the Home Office does not control the purse strings of the economy and the department is something of a joke with respect to competent administration.
I notice that the policy has changed with respect to the illegal immigration crisis, rather than trying to get the Navy to push away rubber boats mid channel or deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Money has been found to simply pay the French to solve the problem on their territory. Just as Germany paid Turkey to stem the tide of Syrian refugees. This will require discretion because paying the French would not play well with the party. Like the Republicans in the US being sold a Wall along the border, the UK equivalent is to defend the coast with warships.
Things move on and immigration is no longer pressing concern. In fact the skills shortage is harming a lot of business sectors and an immigration policy is part of the solution.
The big issue is the economy, keeping Braverman and other loons in the Home Office while deprivingthem of a few headlines, is probably a good tactic.
Sunak did not get to the top of the Conservative party by supporting progressive policies. He has to talk the talk but also find a way to walk the walk that does not lead to a catastrophic fall off an economic cliff.
The next couple of years will be interesting to see if he can weave around the economic obstacles and dodge back stabbers in his own party. Does he have a good team around him, I wonder.
Which is why she was leaking the document at issue in the first place. Immigration may be a much less salient issue for more ordinary voters than she and her fellow-ideologues realise, but I doubt if that will stop her aiming for something eye-catching for the Tory press. Here’s this morning’s Telegraph (guess where that was sourced) :
(Interesting that this appears just as another Home Office cock-up is causing disgusting conditions in a holding camp for migrants, putting her under more pressure)
This will be interesting. Passing laws is easy. Getting them enforced and used as they were intended, that is another matter.
Direct Action campaigning is, I am sure, very exciting for political activists who are keen on grabbing headlines. Bellowing through loudspeakers outside Parliment and supergluing themselves to the road to block highways, climbing tall buildings and draping them with banners or tunnelling under road construction sites. It all sounds like great fun, but whether it shifts public opinion is quite another thing. Recently they caused a lot of disruption to the public who may support their cause but resent sitting in traffic for hours. No-one wants essential public services disrupted.
These laws are a reaction to that and the public will not necessarily see the bigger picture about their rights being eroded. Usually such laws are poorly drafted and are eventually tested in the courts and rolled back. The police and judiciary resent having their time wasted and budgets drained by this sort of thing.
This is pretty much par for the course in British politics and fills endless hours on radio phone in programs with public debate. Conservatives do not like laws that infringe their rights, but are quite relaxed if they are used to punish others, especially if they don’t vote.
Whether the Sunak administration has any progressive policies remains to be seen. He will have to produce something or else cede that territory to Labour. There is a lot of nasty tasting economic medicine being lined up that is going to make voters very angry. Sunak will have to come up with something that sugars the pill.
I think Sunak is the best the Conservatives have got. He has two years, which is hardly any time at all to fix the economy. I think we are still in the ‘phoney war’ stage of an economic crisis and the worst is yet to come.
Well, a right wing terrorist threw three firebombs at an immigration centre yesterday, then committed suicide (or perhaps, like many firebombers, wasn’t very good at it), and what was Braverman’s response?
“There was a distressing incident in Dover earlier today. I am receiving regular updates on the situation. My thoughts are with those affected, the tireless Home Office staff and police responding. We must now support those officers as they carry out their investigation.”
Which pretty much says “I’m worried about the staff, and only the staff”.
I do wonder if the tory party is an exercise in modern performance art. The various lows ploughed, which one next is both a car crash, a dumpster fire, and a screaming chainsaw juggling event gone wrong, so Braverman even manages to set a low compared with Patel, Grayling, Johnson, Hancock, Truss, Patterson, Dorries and the other fifty odd I can’t remember.
Sacked for sending private classified emails, then SEEMS TO BE KEEP DOING IT. Dreaming of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda in an almost MLK speech, “tofu eating wokerati” and now, in effect, a terrorist apologist. Only think further she could state is that the “immigrants were asking for it”.
The Home Office under the Conservatives has been an exercise in successive “hold my beer” administrations. Theresa May’s already-draconian policies look positively liberal compared to Patel’s (with Javid and Rudd in between to provide the slippery slope downward), and Braverman seems determined to double down on deliberate cruelty against immigrants. At this rate the next one will be proposing to grind up asylum seekers into soylent green and hand it out at food banks.
We’ve made a good start on this - where I live (southwest England) it has been very mild so far for the time of year, we haven’t even turned our central heating on yet and we don’t live in a particularly warm house. Granted, we are lucky enough to be able and willing to live in a cooler environment than some, but in the 8 years we’ve lived in this house it’s been rare for us to not put the heating on until November. Having said that, this is the first winter in which we’ve had our loft conversion, which may well have helped.
Not that I’m going to give much credit for reading out a boilerplate statement but the first group mentioned is “those affected”, which presumably includes the residents of the centre. Seems like a case where an Oxford comma would have been useful (to clarify that she was listing 3 groups, not one group with 2 subgroups).
I presume this was more because they thought they might be able to trap him into saying something horrendous, rather than because they wanted someone who supports attacks on asylum seekers. But I expect he’s too smart an operator to fall for that - especially if it was a morning broadcast, unless he’d started early that day in celebration.
