By Andy Silvester
The best that can be said for Rishi Sunak’s speech outside 10 Downing Street yesterday is that unlike his predecessor but two, Theresa May, the stage didn’t fall down.
Standing sodden in the rain, looking every bit the wally without a brolly, he looked like a man who knew he was facing the fight of his life in his election speech – and who didn’t feel as if the gods were on his side.
In truth, he had to take the plunge at some point, though perhaps he could have done so inside. There was a quite compelling working theory that the Tories were content to hang around for a while longer, hoping that something might turn up.
With tax cuts effectively wiped out as an option by borrowing figures and a warning from the IMF that an autumn fiscal event could send the markets into a Trussian frenzy again, the best they could do was some not-quite-brilliant inflation numbers. May as well, eh?
Yet for all of the well-founded frustrations with the Conservative party, they do still have a real shot in this election. No matter how tired the country might be, the election gives you a hearing. The question is will Rishi Sunak have anything to say?
There is a sense, sometimes, that we still don’t really know who the Prime Minister is. Instinctively, he doesn’t seem like a man who enjoyed lockdown; nor a man who is wholly comfortable with the Rwanda scheme, or some of the more culture war tactics his party have employed in recent years.
He looks more comfortable talking about tech, about a twenty-first-century Britain that’s on the front foot. Can that optimism turn around his poll ratings? We aren’t convinced, but then, the negativity certainly won’t.
For Keir Starmer, the challenge is different: hold on. Stay solid. Show the country that there’s a leader as well as a technocrat, a Prime Minister not just a critic. Let battle commence.
