At the golden hour of his triumph, Rishi Sunak addressed MPs behind closed doors – and there was so much whooping, pounding and wolf-whistling that I wondered if he’d taken his top off.
Alex Chalk MP rushed out and said, “He smashed it!”, as though our next PM had won The X Factor. It’s a ridiculous comparison because people actually *vote* on The X Factor, but then the Tories are just happy to have a new leader. The madness of the weekend’s phony war left them relieved to have avoided an election.
Handsome and rich, tipped to be prime minister since the age of five, Sunak didn’t campaign in public at all, except to be photographed briefly in a blue jumper (even the silk-worms, I’m told, learnt their craft at Oxford).
By contrast, Boris flew back from his holiday like some Jacobite prince come to reclaim his crown. At a private meeting on Saturday night, Rishi gave it to him straight: even if you do make it on to the ballot, Boris, you’ll trigger a Tory civil war. The idea that Sunak might drop out for *him* was laughable: what had Boris to offer but a pocketful of holiday money and half a duty free Toblerone?
Chastened, Mr Johnson withdrew – leaving, on Monday morning, just Penny Mordaunt to beat. Her insurgent campaign was run by Andrea Leadsom. Think Supergran meets Gramsci, making a long march through the institutions.
The case for Mordaunt was explored at a meeting of the European Research Group, the irregular heart of the party, red-blooded and egalitarian (these are the MPs most likely to own a caravan). Rishi represents the triumph of “finance” said one: “He’s Goldman Sachs, for God’s sake!” Others argued that they ought to back Penny just to give the members a choice, otherwise it looks like a coup.
But with the threshold for the ballot set at 100 MPs, and Penny calculated only to have a fraction of that number, it wasn’t on the cards.
Come 2pm, as we gathered in the committee corridor for the results, the inevitable was announced: Penny dropped. Tory MPs were already tweeting their congratulations to Rishi as Graham Brady read out the returns for an election that never happened, because only one name was submitted.
At this moment, there were two curious cameos on the corridor. A shih tzu puppy wandered in, looked about, and ran off. Then Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of England, walked past, beaming like a Cheshire Cat. After several years of populism, the accountants are back in charge.
Tories no longer fighting to win next election but to survive it
The party gathered to anoint: Theresa May, Gavin Williamsom (back in the big time), and Dominic Raab, looking furious that he never got the job himself (give the man a chance: he could be just as bad as the others). Penny faced a barrage of questions: “I’m good,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m gonna support the new prime minister.” As for the emperor-elect, he marched down the corridor, gave us a mute thumbs up – and entered a room shaking with a tempest of clapping.
That was the “most enthusiastic reception of a leader I’ve seen”, said David Davis. I believe him. Though the public might have been less impressed by Sunak’s televised statement, which was hasty and delivered to the wrong camera. The problem with becoming PM without a spell in opposition is there’s no time to learn the tricks of the trade.
Politics aside, this is an exciting moment in our island’s history. Rishi is not just our shortest PM but our first Hindu – multicultural Britain come of age – and all happening in the middle of Diwali. We could certainly do with some of Ganesha’s luck.
For the UK has run out of money. Taxes are sky-high. Decline is palpable. The Conservative Party, which bears a little responsibility for all of this, now polls somewhere behind lyme disease, and its MPs know they are fighting not to win the next election but to survive it. To that end, they have put competence before charisma, rejecting the passions of Brexit for the demands of the markets. Solvency trumps sovereignty.
As for Boris, no doubt he was booking a flight back to the Dominican Republic, our populist pretender over the sea to Skye. He’ll be back. I hope he’ll be back.
