The void beneath Sunak’s smile

Lord Ashcroft’s biography paints the PM as a decent man, but one whose beliefs are opaque

ALL TO PLAY FOR by Michael Ashcroft

528pp, Biteback, T £14.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP£16.99, ebook £10.99

When Lord Ashcroft published his first biography of Rishi Sunak in November 2020, I asked in these pages whether it was premature to write a book on a chancellor who had only been in the job five minutes. But the subject of the former Tory grandee’s update, All to Play For, has since gone up in the world.

In some respects, it’s remarkable that an MP first elected in 2015, who

four years ago was leading the Government’s consultation into disabled lavatories, is now Prime Minister. Yet as Ashcroft seems at pains to point out, Sunak appeared destined for greatness from the start. Ollie Case, a classmate at Oakmount, the private Southampton prep school, recalls the “all-round good egg” being “very well regarded”. Kuti Miah, a family friend, adds: “I saw lights on Rishi from day one… it’s just [that] he’s so charismatic.” This is one of two mentions of the word “charismatic” in Ashcroft’s book – the other being a reference to Tony Blair.

What Sunak lacks in pizazz, however, he makes up for in graft. From the “intellectual arrogance”

of Winchester College, where he was head boy, to a first in philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and then on to Goldman Sachs, his work ethic was unparalleled. His boss at the last of these, Richard Sharp – who would later go on to resign as BBC chairman after loaning Boris Johnson £800,000 – remembers someone “very willing” and “very eager”, with a “mentality of flawless execution”. Buddies at Stanford, the Californian university where Sunak met his wife Akshata Murty while they were both studying for an MBA, recall a “power couple” wanting to make a difference.

Sunak wrote a prescient paper aged 16 in 1997, voicing concern

that New Labour rhetoric sounded “worryingly pro-Europe” and warning of looming tax rises (and the re-emergence of the hard Left) under Blair; but, bar a bit of leafleting, he “was not actively involved in student politics”. When he was elected as William Hague’s successor in Richmond, North Yorkshire, in 2015, aided by his best friend and now political secretary James Forsyth, he brought to Westminster a unique brand of “stamina” and “a kind of happy innocence”.

Ashcroft pitches Sunak as an inherently low-tax Tory compromised, as chancellor, by Boris Johnson’s “desire to throw money” at any situation. He denies claims of a “plot” to oust Boris, insisting that the latter became “paranoid” about Sunak’s rising-star status. “The more Boris’s relationship with Dom [Cummings] worsened,” he writes, “the more paranoid Boris became about Rishi.” Johnson’s decision to raise national-insurance contributions to pay for social care drove another wedge, while Sunak – environmentally conscious but not “hair-shirt green” – was “frustrated by Johnson’s environmental fixation, largely because he felt that [Johnson] was never honest with the public about its true cost”.

Sunak finally resigned as chancellor in July 2022. According to Tory backbencher Philip Davies: “When people say he was always scheming to get rid of Boris, I know that’s nonsense.” Yet Boris backers may question why “readyforrishi. com” was first registered with the American domain-name registrar GoDaddy in December 2021, a whole seven months before Johnson’s resignation. “The Johnson people,” Ashcroft writes, still “hate him” today.

Make no mistake: All to Play For is not a hit job. Yet Ashcroft repeatedly describes Sunak as both “decent” and “ruthless”; a Thatcherite who backed Brexit but was “captured by the Treasury orthodoxy”; a fiscal prude who none the less spaffed billions on furlough. One prominent backbencher tells Ashcroft: “Rishi says more or less the right things… he’s pro-Brexit, wants to stop the boats, wants to cut tax… I just don’t feel he walks the walk enough.” A second source is quoted as describing Sunak as “like a CFO. I don’t see him as a Right-winger. I can’t define Sunakism and I think he’s been thrust into this position 10 years too soon.”

In concluding his book by questioning “what is Sunak’s vision for the future of Britain as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century?”, Ashcroft unwittingly hits on the problem with Rishi Sunak. For while readers are left in no doubt of the Prime Minister’s decency and clear-eyed competence, you don’t just need someone who says the right things: you need someone who believes them.