Hostile reaction to peer’s article backing Sunak
LORD DOLAR POPAT, who is doing an excellent job as the prime minister’s trade envoy to Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, received a torrent of abuse from Sunday Telegraph readers after he had written a piece supporting Rishi Sunak.
I first read the article and the comments online at night and in the printed copy of the paper the next morning.
Curiously, by morning, the online comments appeared to have vanished. I remember some of them, but won’t repeat any. I can only assume they were so distasteful the editors thought it wise to suspend the comments section.
The long years I spent on the Daily Telegraph, then on the Sunday Telegraph and then back on the Daily Telegraph, surrounded by wonderful, civilised and progressive colleagues, have been some of my happiest. The readers were intelligent, but the ones who responded to Dolar’s article sadly betrayed a new intolerance.
Some of the things Dolar said will strike a chord with British Asians, especially with Eastern Eye readers. “I write as one of the people that persuaded Rishi Sunak to go into politics in the first place,” he said. “His family, like mine, came from very humble beginnings and migrated to Britain. They were not wealthy people. Like thousands of other Asian migrants to Britain, Rishi’s family watched what little they had very carefully and prospered.
“What we need in Britain now, and it’s a very Conservative idea, is careful management of what we have and turning it into more. Rather than immediate tax cuts, we need to manage national money over the long term. The conserve in conservatism means voting for Mr Sunak.”
Dolar concluded: “Rishi may be caricatured as a Goldman Sachs master-of-the-universe, but he’s more like that corner shop guy, trying to make ends meet and grow our economy. That is where he comes from, and actually it’s the same place as the grocer’s daughter Mrs Thatcher.
“We need a leader who can inspire, someone who – like Obama did in the United States – can answer the difficult questions about all aspects of national life. Rishi Sunak is that leader.”
Most fair-minded readers of the Sunday Telegraph will acknowledge Dolar has a point, even if they would feel more comfortable with Liz Truss. But I am not sure the hostility shown by some readers has lifted the tone of the debate.
I must admit I am a little saddened by their reaction.