The Rise and Fall of Rishi | Robert Hutton

HHow is Rishi Sunak so bad at this? Having ask the question a few months ago, it's time to try to answer it. The electoral campaign aroused little controversy regarding his lack of political acumen: from the rain-swept announcement to the evacuation of D-Day, including the response to the gambling scandal, he led his repeatedly left as a man who simply has not encountered democratic politics. Before.

And at least part of the answer to the mystery of his incompetence is that he didn't really do it. More than any other prime minister in the last 50 years, Sunak has managed to rise to the top without having to deal with the complicated task of convincing people to vote for him. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson – they all fought for unwinnable seats for their party and experienced the frustration of the opposition benches.

Sunak, by contrast, is a zoo baby: selected in 2015 for Richmond, until recent weeks one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. He entered Parliament just as his party secured its first majority in decades. Young, glamorous, wealthy, from an ethnic minority, it is no surprise that Cameron sees him as the future of the Conservative Party.

And it was only the last stage of a life remarkable for its happy journey: Winchester, Oxford, Goldman Sachs, Stanford, marriage to an heiress, a hedge fund. Don't take my word for it. According to him, the great difficulty of his youth was the lack of satellite television.

Sunak's astonishing fortunes continued in Parliament. Few of those in the Brexit trenches remember those easy times, but Sunak was far from the fighting: a loyal backbencher and junior minister, dutifully voting for his party's policies that week. His decision to support leaving the EU without making a big deal about it was hardly bold. It was simply the smart thing for an ambitious backbencher to do.

In fact, it reflected the dominant theme of Sunak's political career: from his selection in Richmond to his premiership, what mattered was always the internal politics of the Conservative party. This month is the first time he has been forced to call on someone who is not a party member.

If lukewarmly supporting Brexit in the referendum was his characteristic first decision, his second decision was to enthusiastically support Johnson for leadership of the party in 2019. His article in The temperature with Oliver Dowden and Robert Jenrick announcing that “only Boris” could save the Tories, it was then that we realized that the careerists had seen the future. Did they think Johnson had the character to be Prime Minister? It hardly matters. They believed Johnson would win and that supporting him might help them get back on their feet. He did it, and that's what happened. Sunak entered the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Eight months later he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed because Dominic Cummings considered him more flexible than his predecessor Sajid Javid.

It is tempting to attribute such a meteoric rise to formidable talent. But apart from taking part in a debate in 2019 while Johnson hid in a fridge somewhere, Sunak rose to the second most powerful seat in the Cabinet without making a single notable contribution to British politics.

Moreover, the years 2015 to 2022 were marked by the unusual absence of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition from the scene. The Jeremy Corbyn years and then the cross-party unity of Covid allowed Sunak to become Chancellor of the Exchequer – indeed, to spend most of his time in that role – without ever facing a tricky moment in Parliament. Can there ever have been a career like that?

In 2022, he finally hit a bump in the road, as he was defeated by Liz Truss for the party leadership. Conservative MPs suspected him of being motivated more by careerism than by conviction. His inability to win the support of the most stubborn conservatives was a clue that he might have difficulty with people who didn't have membership cards in their wallets. But even here he was to experience a stroke of luck when it imploded, allowing him to become prime minister without having to convince party members that it was a good idea.

Of course, a happy life is not a character flaw. We should all hope to be so blessed. But challenges build character. The Labour victory of 1997 was built by veterans of the 1983 defeat. Prime ministers’ backgrounds often contain a childhood trauma or struggle – often the death or illness of parents – that helps explain their driving ambition.

Having never had to convince a non-Conservative electorate, it is hardly surprising that, as Prime Minister, Sunak prioritized Tory unity over establishing distance between him and his predecessors. A process-focused insider, he has spent the past few days explaining that he needs the Gambling Commission to tell him whether he is sharing his election plans with his team. These are zoo baby mistakes.

Sunak made matters worse – much worse – with his inability to deal with the political defeats that other politicians were accustomed to, of course.

It would be a mistake to lay blame for the Tories' upcoming defeat in 2024 solely on Sunak. Most of the blame surely lies with the party's adventures with Brexit and Boris: the former is a complex political problem that its MPs have not had the patience or wit to understand; the second, a man clearly unfit to hold high office.

But for those of us who are fans of story arcs, it's nice that Sunak supported the two decisions that are now causing him so much trouble. Supporting them may have been tactically smart for Sunak, the ambitious MP, but they proved destructive for Sunak, the prime minister.

Electoral defeat was imminent anyway, but Sunak made the situation worse – much worse – with his inability to deal with the political defeats that other politicians were accustomed to. Unaccustomed to picking himself up and dusting himself off, he simply didn't understand that he had made mistakes, let alone learn from them. Poorly served by a court of friends, his response to criticism is so acerbic precisely because he was so incomprehensible. What will he think of this monumental defeat? Perhaps less than we imagine.