We Need To Talk About Rishi Sunak... Again
I’ll start off with veteran Labour MP Barry Sheerman’s comments in the Commons - which were splendid, by the way - in response to Sunak’s statement to the House of Commons on Thursday regarding the impending cost-of-living crisis.
I've written about Rishi Sunak so many times over the last 2 years, and my argument against him has never changed since he became Chancellor at the behest of Dominic Cummings.
And I share Barry Sheerman's wrath here.
The Chancellor is incompetent - and yes, for writing off £4.3 billion in Covid fraud, he should, by all accounts resign.
But.
What you have to remember about Sunak is that he isn't a politician. He isn't even really the Chancellor.
Actually, let's get 'Meta' and suggest Rishi Sunak isn't even… real.
Rishi Sunak is a brand.
What Conservative supporters have fallen for is the vestige of his Instagram persona that does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to explaining the superlatives often applied when he is described as the “greatest Chancellor ever.”
But disappointment awaits when they'll encounter it up close and personal - probably after the May elections, possibly around Autumn when Sunak says the cost of living crisis will be at its peak - and discover that it's ultimately trite and hollow, and Sunak isn’t “the greatest chancellor ever” but actually, as Sheerman says, incompetent.
Like 'Gabbo' from The Simpsons - Sunak just appears out of nowhere; doing 'something'. Albeit usually with a signature attached to some sexy, Menswear catalogue-inspired meme.
Ironically #1 - the minor character ‘Gabbo’ is designed to be Krusty the Clown’s replacement - many elope to support his programme from ‘The Krusty the Klown Show’ because of ‘the push’; the curiosity - they think, ‘what the hell is this all about?’/’I’m going to tune in and find out!’
Ironically #2 - the character of Gabbo is a ventriloquist’s dummy - Sunak, if you’re familiar with the Financial Times’ superb hit-job on how Boris Johnson ‘gets his money’, is another puppet for a nefarious group of exceedingly wealthy Conservative Party donors.
But like Gabbo, nobody quite knows what it is or what it represents - but it's special; something indescribable that must have some higher meaning because it has been marketed as such.
Like Red's Unholy Barbecue sauce - which is superb marketing.
You see the packaging and there's a 'Southern taste of the Bible Belt' about it - it even 'looks' American.
Whatever that means.
But then you turn it over and look at the fineprint, and see that it was manufactured just outside of Wigan, and your hopes and dreams of taking your pulsating tongue on an Oculus Rift, Deliverance-inspired VR trip to darkest Appalachia are shattered when you realise that you're actually just sitting there on a sofa stuffing your face with fall-off-the-veganuary-wagon chicken covered in an unidentified red object - from Lancashire - while watching 'Gator attack' videos on YouTube.
And the heating is off - to save money.
And it's cold. Like, Jack Nicholson wandering around the Overlook Hotel Maze "Brrr" cold.
The lustre rubs off. It's a disappointment.
And that's what Rishi Sunak is like when you realise - despite the marketing, ultimately, he's just another obscenely wealthy, clueless, ambition-less, vision-less Tory nincompoop that's most likely not to give you any warmth.
At the very least, Sunak has put you in a position where you’re left having to choose between either being warm or being hungry - according to the government’s own Food Security Report quietly slipped out by Whitehall in the run-up to Christmas.
Being a man of the future, of course, the nerdy Jedi, and self-confessed “coke addict”, Rishi Sunak will be all too aware of the trend of 4K ASMR videos featuring crackling fireplaces, and so the likelihood is you won’t need ‘real heat’ to keep warm anyway.
Maybe you could ‘imagine’ what warmth is like.
You can sit in a tent - presumably - and watch it on a tablet using the local Gregg’s Wi-Fi - or put it inside a virtual barrel and gather around it with other disillusioned Bulb customers while Alexa plays a Spotify playlist comprised of post-Soviet pop anthems and harmonica-based Louisiana blues classics.
Or we can do what Kwasi Kwarteng MP suggests and simply wrap up warm instead to avert the “catastrophe” facing consumers, according to Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis, who Kwarteng apparently “batted off” in September last year - despite Lewis’ warnings.
Or - most drastically, we can cuddle our pets, eat ginger and do star jumps to keep warm, according to the UK's third largest energy provider Ovo.
Many who like Sunak will often speak in superlatives and describe him as the "greatest chancellor ever" and yet probe further, and you'll discover that there is no substance to the title bestowed upon him.
[Maharaja of the Dales is the strangest one I've seen]
They will often cite furlough, these "people."
And yet the only reason Rishi Sunak may have given this level of support was due to the simple fact that he had to. It was not his choice to, and even then millions were left Excluded from his support.
If he did not, the system would have collapsed - and without economic support, people would have faced the invidious position of having no choice BUT to go to work - irrespective of how dangerous that might have actually been at the time without vaccines or mitigating factors; masks and so forth.
This was essentially the approach Sunak took in September 2020; his was the 'herd immunity' approach and he took advice from the likes of Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, Prof. Sunetra Gupta and Prof. Carl Heneghan who advised against lockdown and were presumably content with some of the modelling data that later transpired in the form of the high excess mortality rate over the Winter of 2020.
The same Winter when Boris Johnson was having one or two of his lockdown-breaking parties, by the way.
Actually, the concept of furlough was most likely not even Rishi Sunak's.
Frances O'Grady from the TUC claims that furlough was her idea after the TUC met with the Treasury prior to lockdown in March 2020.
The successful German model for furlough, according to Bloomberg, was "decades old."
So Rishi Sunak himself cannot actually make the convincing argument that it was all his idea that millions of jobs were saved when he inevitably launches his signature emblazoned, Hot Pink leadership bid.
A really, really, rubbish coup attempt
For those who witnessed the Chancellor's press conference on Thursday night [to address the impending cost of living crisis], it felt almost like a handover of power.
Some people might not mind this.
By some accounts, he’s immensely popular among the Tory party membership - though not as popular as some.
Voters who witnessed Sunak’s vanity conference will view his back-handed swipe at the Prime Minister with cynicism, but they’ll also sense the opportunism following the so-called 'Night of the Long Knives' in Downing St.
The Guardian front page probably called it right.
It'd be fairer to describe it as an "Exodus” - because nobody truly believes Johnson went to Blackpool to reassess and clear his head, had an epiphany to return to Downing St. and sack aides and policy advisors immediately following a private viewing of ‘The Lion King’.
The likelihood is - however - that when Munira Mirza resigned in disgust at the Prime Minister - over his comments to Sir Keir Starmer - those who subsequently followed - their pending resignation was brought forward when their positions were made untenable following ‘Partygate’.
Johnson was merely waiting for the opportune moment to do it.
This isn’t it.
Incidentally #1, Rishi Sunak also admitted to having attended the Prime Minister's cabinet office birthday party, too.
Incidentally #2, Rishi Sunak was also pictured at the party enjoying a drink [though it’s noted as being non-alcoholic] - which contradicts his earlier claim that he wasn't aware of parties that took place at No. 10 because he doesn't spend his time "staring out this window."
This isn’t the opportune moment because Martin Reynolds and Jack Doyle are associated with Partygate.
Many people suspected that Doyle and Reynolds would be in the firing line - Reynolds, in the case of the “BYOB” party and Doyle who gave awards at one of the Christmas parties from 2020.
If they were the most visible sacrificial goats designed to appease the voting public still outraged by the whole thing, who is Johnson going to sack when the Metropolitan Police investigation comes back, or when Sue Gray releases more information?
There will be nobody left to sack, and by then, it’ll just be Larry the Cat - and he’d better run fast otherwise he might be the last Johnson throws on the table to desperately save his own skin.
But this is the Prime Minister not thinking several steps ahead.
Rishi Sunak, on the other hand, thinks he’s better than that.
Even as early as March 2020, if the account of Dominic Cummings is to be believed, Sunak was disparaging against Boris Johnson:
“Sunak’s view was the same as all serious people July-Oct: there is no plan, just a trolley smashing side to side.”
Throughout, Sunak has been at odds with the Prime Minister - on re-opening the economy, most of all; but he became more visible as a successor when he appeared to dictate when England [at least] would come out of lockdown for so-called ‘Freedom Day’ in July 2021.
This was the point where Sunak became a viable entity for lockdown sceptics that run the party.
Where is Rishi?
It makes sense then, when Johnson is at his weakest, at the most opportunistic moment, Rishi Sunak will be there to offer his rebuke of the Prime Minister’s Savile comments. “I wouldn't have said it,” he noted.
It is to stand out as the successor - or for all intents and purposes, Gabbo to Krusty the Klown.
Trying his hand at launching his bid; almost expecting Johnson to resign, as David Cameron did following his Brexit defeat, sensing that Johnson isn't the man to deal with the impending cost-of-living crisis or take the country forward and somebody else may be better suited.
But why - if Rishi Sunak is the "greatest chancellor ever" - is he sinking millions of pounds of taxpayer funds - as part of the government’s so-called Future Fund - into an online betting company and a luxury Caribbean firm selling holidays on private islands?
Why - if Rishi Sunak is the “greatest Chancellor ever” - is he on the wrong side of the Bank of England who are saying - in a rather bleak assessment of the year ahead - that take-home pay would fall by five times the amount it did during the financial crisis of 2008?
“The worst hit,” according to the Times, “to real incomes since comparable records began in 1990.”
Why - if Rishi Sunak is the “greatest Chancellor ever’ - is he hoodwinking the British public with a £200 so-called “rebate” when he could just as easily describe it as a loan that we’ll eventually have to pay back?
You’d expect with Rishi Sunak’s wealth of experience working in finance [managing hedge funds and so forth] to be able to know the difference. Or maybe he just isn’t being honest.
Why - if Rishi Sunak is the best Chancellor ever - is the price cap on energy affecting 22 million homes, leaving the public saddled with bills almost £700 more per year than they were paying previously while the fiscal environment is safe for energy companies, like Shell, and its shareholders, to make £14.2 billion in pre-tax profit?
Two very interesting threads here and here courtesy of co-founder of the Climate Litigation Network, environmental lawyer and proponent of the ‘Windfall Tax’ Tessa Khan.
Some of which could have been put into the government’s Consolidated Fund if only Rishi Sunak investigated and retrieved £4.3 billion in stolen support funds via Covid loans, rather than write it off.
Three quarters of which could have been added to the Consolidated Fund if only the Treasury hadn’t allocated a “wasted” and “irretrievable” £9 Billion to the Department for Health and Social Care on useless and unused PPE.
£600 million of which, according to Private Eye, has simply “gone missing” after it was awarded to an interior design company called Unispace Global Ltd to procure PPE.
Meanwhile, in actual ‘Taking Back Control’ news, the French government forced energy provider EDF to take a £7 billion financial hit to protect households from sky-rocketing energy costs. The idea is seemingly inconceivable to Rishi Sunak.
And to deal with it all? Pay rises? “What pay-rises?” says Andrew Bailey from the Bank of England.
“Live within your means,” says the obscenely wealthy Rishi Sunak.
You could go on with Rishi Sunak and his failures, and I defy anybody who might consider him to be ‘the greatest Chancellor ever’ when he is not.
Strip back the layers. Take a heat gun to a veneer and then peel away gently.
In an excellent piece by the Financial Times’ Chris Giles, Rishi Sunak, according to Giles, has left us with a “true and fair economic outlook” that is, “pretty grim.”
And so demonstrably, Sunak is not the ‘greatest Chancellor ever’.
He is, as Barry Sheerman quite rightly pointed out, incompetent and possibly Worst. Chancellor. Ever.
Subscribers can also read my previous article ‘A Most Dangerous Man’ here:
