Hhave you seen the video that Rishi Sunak posted last month wish Stockton Town FC luck in the Northern Premier League final? Warning: don’t watch if you expect to vote Conservative in the next election or you won’t be able to. I’ts horrible. I don’t understand how he could be so inept as to record it, or why someone watching it wouldn’t delete it unless they were working directly for Keir Starmer.
The problem is not the words he says. It’s unlikely he had anything to do with the script, which is clear from the way he presents it. This is the problem. He speaks with enormous energy, enthusiasm, a big smile and without a trace of sincerity. No one on earth would think he means what he says. Someone who didn’t understand a word of English would nevertheless discern that what was going on was something he didn’t give a single shit about. Not a lie, just a statement I had no emotional connection to.
I don’t know what the Prime Minister was thinking as he let his face and voice do it, but it had nothing to do with the Northern Premier League final. Perhaps he had been pondering the impending local election disaster, the threats to his leadership within the Conservative party, the high rate of inflation, or perhaps it was simply that his balls were in a vice.
If so, a prime suspect for Vice-Operator (Vice-Chancellor? Head of Vice?) would be Stockton MP Matt Vickers, one of those red-wall Tory MPs Boris Johnson conjured up only to be later condemned by fate. A historical hit, like Vichy France, the Latin emperors of Byzantium or a snowman in Regent’s Park. If Vickers were a fatalistic type, he’d be taking nostalgic selfies at the Palace of Westminster and planning the next phase of his life. Instead he had Rishi Sunak say: “Your local MP Matt Vickers has been telling me about all the action in Bishy Road!”
Are we to believe that this conversation happened? That the video wasn’t just a feeble attempt to support a convicted MP with 27 seconds of the Prime Minister’s time? That Sunak had a good lie with Vickers about the moderate success a minor league soccer team is temporarily enjoying in his constituency? They claim it literally happened. Does the Prime Minister have time for this kind of chat? If I did, would this be how I would spend it?
I’ve never read Horsemen or The Count of Monte Cristo, but they seem very different
We really don’t know. Last weekend he went to watch his home team, Southampton, get relegated from the Premier League. Maybe he really likes football. What else do you like? People say she wears expensive clothes. It bothers them, so I guess he would stop if he wasn’t interested. So, clothes. What else? According to the Spectator: “Colleagues make fun of him for his taste in music (Michael Bublé), television (Emily in Paris) and literature (Jilly Cooper CBE). One of her favorite novels is Cooper’s first bonkbuster, Riders.” Her spokesman could not confirm or deny the latter enthusiasm, adding: “I think she’s said before that one of her favorite books is The Count of Monte Cristo”.
Does that ring truer than the tone in which he said, “Good luck anchors!”? (Stockton’s nickname. They were unlucky, in case you’re wondering, they bish at Bishy Road and lost on penalties.) I’ve never read Riders or The Count of Monte Cristo, but they look pretty good to me. different. Is this the product of conflicting attempts at image projection? Or is he a wide and voracious reader, especially drawn to themes of copulation and revenge?
I’m a musical philistine so I won’t comment on his supposed Bublé propensity, but I love TV and Emily in Paris is terrible. It’s as hard to watch as Stockton’s video. I don’t like cringe-worthy or heavy-handed shows, but if a show is stripped of anything that remotely matters on any level, it becomes heavy in a different way. I can’t believe anyone with an iota of intellectual respect could enjoy it.
Do you really like it? In this case, for all his intelligence and success, he must be, deep down, an idiot. Or does he just think it’s the kind of thing people will like for the sake of saying they like it? In this case he thinks we are idiots, or rather the constituency he wants to appeal to are idiots. This would encroach on Liz Truss’s support base.
What I’m asking is: who is it? His shotgun attempts to answer that question only needs to be raised again in italics. In the panel world where I’ve spent a lot of time, successful panelists have to say things that the audience finds funny. But before that, they have to be recognizable as the kind of person viewers can understand. It can make contributors project self-parody versions of themselves, but it has to be a projection of something true or the audience’s connection is broken. You can’t get away with pretending to be someone you’re not, and you can’t be more than one person at the same time: your favorite book might be The Count of Monte Cristo or Horsemen, but not both.
To be anyone, you will inevitably be someone some people don’t like. Boris Johnson got it, and for years his unabashedly flawed persona came across as refreshingly real. Unfortunately, of all the skills needed to be prime minister, this turned out to be the only one he possessed. But most of his predecessors allowed a sense of his true self, albeit in a positive way, to emerge. Sunak gives us nothing.
Two weeks ago a new king was crowned whose opinions and irascibility are well known. This is a problem in a monarch. Good luck messages to local football teams are the stock of the House of Windsor. Complaints about pens and delays, and adherence to dubious alternative medical practices, are not. Charles III should take a leaf out of his mother’s book and hide his personality. Sunak should follow his king’s lead and prove he has one.
