Can the 'real Rishi Sunak' please stand up?: PM told to be himself ahead of the election

The PM has been told to be himself ahead of the general election. Credit: PA

Almost three quarters of British people think Britain is broken, that we’re getting poorer and that nothing works properly.

This was the headline in a poll released over the weekend by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft.

If that poll is correct, three things follow:

1. Almost no one will be surprised by the disclosure that more than 100 schools are unsafe to use because they are made with crumbling aerated concrete, which should have been replaced years ago

2. It is impossible for the fifth Tory prime minister since 2010 to blame Labour for schools that can’t open, hospitals struggling to cope with record treatment backlogs, and the rest of the UK’s creaking fabric - because in 13 years Conservative governments surely had time, voters will think, to fix some of this.

3. Sunak’s only hope of avoiding total humiliation in a general election that is around a year away is to be himself, and in effect characterise his Tory predecessors as his opposition. He has to “be the change”, in the jargon. This is what Johnson pulled off in the 2019 general election, in the perception of voters, though Johnson subsequently failed to deliver that change.

Can Sunak become a conviction politician, with an agenda to mend Britain, rather than the brainy technocrat he is widely seen to be, and as someone too fixated on placating the warring factions in his party?

I am told his chief of staff, Liam Booth-Smith, wants to unleash “the real Sunak”, but that others in Downing St are advising he remain more cautious and conciliatory.

It is unclear how this tension will resolve itself, but one of his closest cabinet supporters says “Rishi’s chances of winning the election are so remote he should throw caution to the wind and be himself”.

Which is a strategy, though one that will be noticed only if we don’t see many more of our public services and great institutions seizing up.

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