As the “Noah’s Ark” period of Liz Truss’s UK Prime Ministership (hint: “reigned” for 40 days and 40 nights) draws to its humiliating close, the big question is whether Rishi Sunak is the rainbow: God promising never to do it again. The odds do favour nobody being silly enough to repeat the last few weeks, and hopefully Mr Sunak leads Britain back to prosperity: free of the EU, free of the silly coronavirus lockdowns, and able to rebuild its wealth and position in the world.
He certainly has the right credentials within the Conservative party – rich, private school educated, right accent, colonialist antecedents – qualities which Liz Truss (and Sir John Major before her) lacked, hence their struggles to make any headway; Tories, especially their working-class voters (who are all snobs! haha!) really aren’t impressed by “Oiks” getting above their station in life.
I also think the presence of a slightly “embarrassing” (shall we say) background is what hamstrung Simon Bridges in New Zealand. Personally, I was shocked and appalled to read in his book that he worked as a bartender at the Northern Club. That kind of unctuous nonsense may impress a certain kind of onanist, but here in the real world you can’t pole-vault from serving drinks like a charlady to being a National party Prime Minister, can you?
What will be amusing to see is the reaction of the Labour party in Britain. Needless to say, the party is full of hypocrites and racists (start the clock on the racist abuse of Sunak commencing from the left-wingers). On the one hand, they talk about “inclusion” and wanting more “diversity” in politics – until you actually get someone like Sunak in office. Then it’s a different story; just cast a glance at Chuck Schumer in the US to see what I mean. Schumer has spent 40 years advocating for “diversity” – until now when his opponent is black; curiously Chuck isn’t standing aside to allow more “diversity” in the US Senate.
It goes without saying that outside of the Labour party, left-wing dinner parties, media and academic circles, nobody cares much about race in Britain. In Parliament Rishi Sunak represents Richmond, in Yorkshire – a part of the World which hasn’t had much in the way of immigrants since 1066 – and has had far larger majorities than William Hague ever managed. Because nobody cares. They don’t care about his skin colour, nor his wealth, nor his religion.
And it is this lack of anybody caring about such matters which hamstrings the opposition and will enable Sunak to deal with a few of the outstanding economic problems.
He has to tackle inflation at nightmare levels and close a 60 billion pound deficit; problems which, strictly speaking, aren’t all that difficult to solve if you really wanted to.
His other challenge is to bring stability to British politics in the way Scott Morrison did in Australia after a long period of chaotic musical chairs: once again not particularly difficult to achieve.
My advice to Rishi Sunak is to get around Britain over the next few weeks giving speeches. He should visit 30 cities between now and Christmas: give people an opportunity to see him in person, ask them to support his efforts to deal with economic matters, and lay out plans for the future. Donald Trump’s success was based on holding rallies and Sunak should copy that model.