Analysis: Rishi Sunak must wish he was still on holiday
To some Westminster-watchers, this ‘silly season’ has felt frustratingly slow-paced.
In contrast to recent recesses – from the Brexit wars, to the Covid crises’ years; the exit from Afghanistan and fractious leadership contests – 2023 has been a stifling news desert.
Rishi Sunak may have enjoyed the break – but the party is firmly over.
Communications director Amber de Botton’s exit on Sunday, for personal reasons, has shaken the No.10 operation.
But by mid-afternoon on Monday, before MPs even filed into the chamber, seemingly a summer’s worth of stories were dished up as the news gods smiled down on Westminster.
Former Tory chief whip Chris Pincher – who allegedly drunkenly groped two men in a top London members club – lost his appeal against a two-month Commons suspension.
It potentially paves the way for a second, relatively imminent by-election, with Pincher’s Tamworth seat joining Nadine Dorries’ Mid Bedfordshire firmly within Labour’s sights.
In a further echo of Boris Johnson’s doomed premiership, Sir Gavin Williamson, he of the pet tarantula and pandemic A-levels disaster fame, was ordered to attend behaviour training – after bullying a Conservative chief whip over not being invited to the Queen’s funeral.
But the bad news for Sunak and No. 10 kept coming. Education secretary Gillian Keegan, she of the ‘no one cares about your GCSE results’ and school concrete crisis fame, dropped another clanger.
In the immediate aftermath of an interview about the concrete chaos causing schools to be shut this week, Keegan complained that no interviewer ever told her she was doing a “f***ing good job” and appeared to complain her colleagues and officials were “sat on their arses all day.”
All this as RAAC slowly crumbles away from the ceilings of England’s schools and ministers do their best impersonation of rats inside sacks.
Not, all things considered, a great start of term for the Prime Minister. If you take the polls at face value, Sunak continued to emit a growing sense of unpopularity over the summer – scoring his lowest ever ranking when the public were asked if he made a good leader.
While suggestions the infamous ‘letters’ – indicating the sender has lost faith in the Prime Minister – could already be on route to 1922 chairman Sir Graham Brady are emerging.
Star Sports have even rounded up his odds, giving him 10/1 for a vote of no confidence to be held this year.
However shaky such reports may be, today has made one thing very clear. While the Prime Minister may still be shaking the sand out of his beach bag, politics is well and truly back.