Et tu, Rupert? Can it be that The Sun is going to knife Rishi Sunak at the general election? Harry Cole, its Political Editor, last night jabbed away at him on that newspaper’s new television show, Never Mind The Ballots.
“I mean you didn’t let him speak!” protested Dr Bhasha Mukherjee, the former Miss England recruited by The Sun to ask Sunak some questions about the NHS, or perhaps to administer first aid once the assault had taken place.
“Oh look at them ganging up already,” Cole responded, his eyes narrowing in the manner of Orson Welles playing Harry Lime. “Did you stitch that up?” he asked the Prime Minister.
A sharp tabloid question to which the answer was no. But Sunak did have some success in gaining the support of the three-strong readers’ panel fielded by The Sun, consisting of a general practitioner, Mukherjee, a London cabbie and a former member of the Armed Forces who campaigns on behalf of veterans.
At times they nodded their agreement with him, and he even got the veteran to explain to the cabbie why the Royal Navy cannot just tow the small boats back into Calais.
How delightful it would be if Sunak the underdog were to win through after all, by behaving with such pluck and decency while he is being roughed up that he arouses a popular reaction in his favour.
Sunak is the kind of Englishman who has been brought up to treat everyone, no matter how unpromising in demeanour, with politeness. “Thanks for having me,” he said at the start of the programme, followed by the implausible words, “Nice to be here.”
He proceeded to stand up for fairness: “Our country is built on fairness” and “when people jump the queue, arrive illegally” it “offends my sense of fairness”.
Cole was not going to allow the programme to degenerate into a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party, and rebuked Sunak for engaging in electioneering.
“There’s a Polling Station sign behind you!” the Prime Minister pointed out.
But Cole said the readers want to know, “Why do you wear your trousers so short?”
Sunak insisted his trousers are not that short, and explained that he does not like to have “lots of baggy stuff at the bottom”.
“When was the last time you spoke to Boris Johnson on the phone?” Cole demanded.
“Er, I don’t know actually,” Sunak replied. “I spoke to him in person at the end of last year and we’ve messaged since.”
“How did you think it was appropriate to hold a US Green Card, also known as a Permanent Resident Card, for seven years as an MP and a minister?”
Sunak: “I’ve addressed this in the past, It was a legacy thing…I acted in accordance with all the rules.”
Cole: “Are you planning to go back to America?”
Sunak [with a pained smile]: “No, the UK is my home.”
Cole: “Is your wife domiciled in India or America?”
Sunak: “Again, I’m not here to talk about my wife, Harry. She’s not an elected politician. My wife has also addressed all those things at the time as a private citizen. And as you know, the recent Budget that the Chancellor did announced that we would be scrapping the non-dom regime anyway.”
Sunak, soon afterwards, when challenged by Cole about his wife’s parents’ company, Infosys: “I can’t control who I fall in love with, right, and I happened to fall in love with my wife when I met her.
“And her family have done something incredibly special. Her Dad created a company from scratch coming from absolutely nothing when he was growing up in India.
“It’s a company that employs thousands and thousands of people around the world, including thousands of people here in the UK.
“And I have nothing but pride and admiration for everything that he’s achieved and no amount of your questions or anyone else’s questions are going to make me walk away from that.”
Fighting talk, but unlikely to arrest the rush by voters as well as newspapers to join what they take to be the winning side.
The Sun might reasonably enough say Sir Keir Starmer was given just as rough a ride when he appeared on the show a fortnight ago.
It’s called initiation through hardship: seeing what the new boy is made of by roughing him up. If he has the guts to come through without bursting into tears, he can hope at length to gain acceptance – unless, that is, he is written off as a weirdo.
The post Andrew Gimson’s television sketch: The Sun roughs up Sunak appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Andrew Gimson
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