Has Rishi Sunak wrecked his hopes of becoming prime minister?

According to Marr, Sunak missed a “big opportunity” to give the British people “a clear story about the economic and military threats our democracy faces and to prepare us for some of the hardship needed during the great rebuilding which is necessary”. Instead, his “party-political games about tax cuts simply look small by comparison”.

The wheels have seemingly come off Sunak’s usually slick PR machine too. The day after his statement “bellyflopped”, Sunak was forced to admit that he had borrowed a Kia Rio from a Sainsbury’s employee to stage a photo of him filling the car with petrol.

In a further embarrassment, footage also emerged showing the “out-of-touch” chancellor struggling to pay for a can of Coca-Cola in a shop “because he kept trying to tap his contactless card on the barcode reader”, said The Mirror.  

Sunak has presented himself as a “safe pair of hands whose grasp of detail and measured manner offered a reassuring contrast to Boris Johnson”, the paper continued. But the Coke debacle suggests that “beneath the soft-speaking and cosy leisurewear”, there is a “Thatcherite Tory, whose privileged upbringing, private education and vast family wealth has apparently left him struggling to understand the real world”.

Downing Street panic

Sunak’s Spring Statement “failed to allay panic” in Downing Street about the effects of inflation, “particularly with the May local elections looming”, said The Sunday Times. 

According to the paper, private strategic polling has shown that the cost-of-living crisis is now the public’s “primary concern”. And that has reportedly left the chancellor “weighing up” whether to introduce new measures including a further council tax rebate as part of a multibillion-pound package.

As worry mounts, key figures in Downing Street have already mooted the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle in the summer, reported The Sunday Times’ chief political commentator Tim Shipman, who suggested that Johnson may be preparing to “move his chancellor”. 

The PM has “previously threatened to do so”, Shipman continued, although “those who speak for” Johnson have said that Sunak is “going nowhere” for now. 

Yet if Sunak stays at the Treasury, he finds himself “almost friendless” in cabinet. And while the council tax rebate plan is popular, he will have to contend with a public and fellow ministers who, following the Covid pandemic bailouts, think that “most economic pain can be removed by the government”.

The “big question” hanging over Sunak’s political future is “how his standing among Conservative MPs will change”, wrote Alibhe Rea in The New Statesman. Many had “far more sympathy for his statement than his cabinet rivals, the media or the general public”. 

In the “unofficial contest” to succeed Johnson, said Rea, “Tory MPs are the crucial electorate, and they are still undecided”. 

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/956231/rishi-sunak-prime-minister