Rishi Sunak: worryingly out of touch?

Poor Rishi Sunak, said Patrick O’Flynn in The Spectator. Not long ago he was the toast of his party, thanks to the furlough scheme and his “smoothy chops” public performances. Such was his popularity, there was talk of him soon replacing Boris Johnson as PM. But now, the Chancellor has learnt that writing large cheques during the Covid emergency was a lot easier than managing the cost-of-living crunch that followed it. Last week, his mini budget was criticised from all sides for failing to meet the scale of the crisis facing millions of families and doing nothing for those on benefits. The botched PR operation that followed only added to the sense that Britain’s richest MP is worryingly out of touch with the lives of the “scrimping classes”.

To show that he is on the same side as the “little people”, Sunak had himself filmed at a petrol station filling up a modest Kia car, said Tom Peck in The Independent. But it soon emerged that it wasn’t his car: he’d borrowed it from a supermarket worker in return for £30 of petrol. He was then seen trying to pay for a can of Coke by pressing his card against a barcode scanner, as if he’d never used contactless payments before. Nor did he come across well in media interviews, said Judith Woods in The Daily Telegraph. He became tetchy when asked to explain how his measures would help a carer on benefits; he was flustered by questions about his billionaire wife’s stake in Infosys, a firm still operating in Russia; and he struggled to name the bread he eats, then explained that in his house “we all have different breads”.This at a time when the boss of Iceland has warned that some food-bank users are refusing root vegetables, because they can’t afford to boil them.

Forget yachts and diamonds, said Janice Turner in The Times. “Life’s one true luxury is not having to worry about the cost of food.” Sunak will always enjoy that privilege, but as inflation bites, thousands more families will have to rummage in discount bins, deny their kids treats and experience the gnawing anxiety of mounting bills. Sunak may have calculated “that this comes at no political cost”, because those on low incomes rarely vote Tory. If so, he misjudged the public mood in a country where “pandemic solidarity has not dissolved”. Has Sunak blown his chances of becoming PM? Not necessarily, said Ailbhe Rea in the New Statesman. In the contest to replace Johnson, Tory MPs are the electorate; they understand that Sunak had to make tough choices, and back his view that borrowing needs to be reined in. But they don’t live in a bubble. They listen to their constituents; and for many voters, the pain is only beginning.