‘What’s most dangerous in the run-up to election year is that most people have given up caring about what you say’ - what Sunak’s ‘Net Zero’ speech really meant, and its consequences

One of the greatest challenges facing Rishi Sunak right now is not necessarily climate change. Climate change and the broader issue of ‘the environment’ exists, but it is changing the perception among the general public that the government isn’t in a state of perma-chaos and therefore (often) too distracted from even tackling ‘the issue’.

‘How can you seriously be expected to educate us on how you intend to tackle X when you cannot even manage Y or Z?’

The idea is that if you cannot create a ‘perfect’, water-tight strategy to communicate the importance of those issues, or what you intend to do about them, most will become fixated on the dysfunction of your messaging and the problems of incompetence rife in your government, and its diabolical comms strategy instead.

The paradox, I suppose, of being in government is that while cataclysmic events take place - like climate change - you also have to convince everybody that your government isn’t falling apart even if everything else seems to be. The problem obviously arises - for voters - when they see that your government is falling apart, however, and no message - no matter how profound Rishi Sunak thinks it is - cuts through enough to alter the perception that most people think you’re (ostensibly) rubbish.