ANALYSIS
Rishi Sunak would have been hoping for sunny skies, a sense of optimism and clear political air.
Proud of his efforts to bring down Britain’s stifling inflation, viewers watching at home or work could barely hear the Prime Minister.
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He was almost drowned out by a protestor with a boombox outside Downing Street playing Things Can Only Get Better — Tony Blair’s anthem that helped deliver New Labour a thumping election victory in 1997.
Sunak looked like he was drowning as the rain teemed down, his suit quickly soaked. Sirens blared in the background as the Metropolitan Police responded to another emergency in Central London.
He needs things to get a lot better if he’s to deliver the Conservative Party — in power since 2010 — another election victory.
The former Chancellor was handed the party leadership in 2022 after Liz Truss’s calamitous 50-day prime ministership. Sunak has never even won a party leadership election. All the polls suggest he will lose this general election.
Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, told supporters “the opportunity for change is what this election is about”.
He will fight this election on the Tories’ record, with a very small target approach of his own, promising little.
Most believe it will be enough to get Labour over the line on July 4.
Rishi Sunak will fight the election on economic security and national security — essentially don’t trust Labour with money or the UK’s defence. He says the world is more dangerous now than during the Cold War.
But the clock has been ticking for the Conservatives since Boris Johnson resigned from office.
Severe austerity after the Global Financial Crisis, the economic impact of Brexit, the mishandling of the COVID pandemic, a National Health Service in crisis and the fact that Britons on average are poorer than they were when the Conservatives came to office more than a decade ago, all make it difficult for Sunak’s message of hope to cut through.
The 44-year-old’s short time at Number 10 might soon be up. His holiday house in California might be looking a lot better.