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Five Days To The British General Election, Let's Talk Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak is a peculiar Prime Minister, and the run-up to the General election has exposed some of greater oddnesses inherent within.

Rich Johnston, founder of Bleeding Cool, is a British political cartoonist. This is the second of several columns in the run-up to the General Election being held by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on July 4th.

Rishi Sunak is a peculiar Prime Minister, and the run-up to the election has exposed some of the greater oddnesses inherent within. In recent weeks that has included announcing the data of the General Election six months before he had to, in the pouring rain without protection, getting wetter and wetter and his suit getting plumper and plumper. He also chose not to stay until the end of the recent D-Day anniversary event in Normandy to get back to the UK for a TV interview that would air the following week. And his aides were found placing bets on the date of the election, which they already knew but which hadn't been announced.

But this is all ephemeral stuff, if handy for headlines and the odd cartoon. But what is a little odder are his policy pledges which seem to say lots of quiet things out loud. It may have begun with the Rwanda policy. Britain has had an influx of asylum seekers in recent years but has also suffered in the ability to process such claims, party as a result of that "austerity" policy I mentioned in the last column. As a result, hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers are being kept in limbo in the UK, unable to work but kept in hotels and hostels, which means there is no room for anyone else to use them. They are frustrated, the population is frustrated, and even the hoteliers are frustrated as there is very little scope to upsell people on their stay. And they never use the mini-bar. As the UK withdrew legal ways to seek asylum, so more people started coming into the country by small boats organised by smuggling gangs, which has led to deaths along the way.

So former Prime Minister-but-one, Boris Johnson, declared a new policy that asylum seekers would have their cases heard not in Britain but in the African nation of Rwanda, still best known for genocide, war, and its own hotel. A deal was made with the Rwandan government worth millions. Since then, the plan has been rejected by the courts, by Parliament and by the people of the UK. Rishi Sunak, who backs the policy, has failed to get it through, and despite eight-figure sums being spent, only two asylum seekers have gone to Rwanda, both voluntarily and paid to go. Intended as a deterrence to asylum seekers more than anything, record numbers have made the dangerous crossing this year.

Rishi has also announced three other policies, which indicate what he is all about. he has talked about making mathematics compulsory in school until the age of 18. But what then? First, he announced national service for all 18-year-olds, whether in the army or doing unpaid work during the year at weekends. This may scupper the plans of some people going to university, as they may have to come home every weekend to their parent's home to do it. Simultaneously he has guaranteed a rising value in real terms for the British state pension, as well as changing tax brackets that he maintained as Chancellor of the Exchequer that saw people on state pensions having to pay tax on it.

He has also committed to introducing a ban on smoking, currently at 18, which will rise every year, so it will always be illegal to smoke for anyone not old enough to vote in next week's election. Which some see as a blatant attack on personal freedom, and will also lead to a situation in 20 years' time when a newsagent demands to see ID to make sure that someone is 38 before they can buy cigarettes, and if they are 37, it will be illegal.

This will be the first general election in which a photo ID will be necessary to vote. This will include senior citizen travel passes, but not 18-year-old travel passes or the common over-18 ID cards used to buy alcohol. One of his former ministers, Rees-Mogg, admitted that this was an attempt at gerrymandering the vote, albeit one that didn't work, as plenty of senior citizens didn't have photo ID at all.

Oh yes, and his billionaire wife was registered as "non-domestic," so she didn't have to pay income tax on her earnings in the UK. That got fixed sharply, but it made an impact. As did the realisation that Sunak worked for the same hedge funds at the time they helped tank the economy by betting against the pound over the Brexit referendum. Being out of touch with everyday people's struggle was underlined when he talked about how his parents had to make sacrifices to send him to private school, so they didn't get satellite TV till much later.

But his worst decision may have been choosing to call the election when he did. A  General Election must be called within five years of the previous one, but the Prime Minister gets to choose when that happens. There were signs the election was turning around, signs he might get to deport some immigrants to Rwanda, even a couple of policies going through that everyone would have approved of – yanked when he called the election sodden in the rain, Now we have glorious sunshine for election week, and plenty of richer people more likely to vote Tory are on their holidays. The choice of the date, 4th of July, just adds to the suggestion that Rishi is looking to get out, lose the election as soon as possible, resign as an MP, move back to California where he used to work and take a job with Elon Musk.

Coupled with the highest taxes in recent memory, as well as inflated prices, and worse standards of living, it is harder than ever to find affordable accommodation, work shifting to unprotected gig economies, NHS waiting lists higher than ever, lack of confidence in police, schools, crime levels and more, this would seem an open goal for Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party. But. As the recent debate proved, at least Rishi has some gumption in his voice, and Keir has none, unable to defend himself from the most spurious of accusations. Some Americans may have had their own experience of that recently. But unlike RFK, the new entry to this race, Nigel Farage is pulling more from the right than the left. And Conservatives who would never vote Labour are happy to switch to Farage's Reform Party. And there is little Rishi can do about it. If he tacks left to stop centrist and swing voters from moving to Labour, he will lose votes to Reform, if he tacks right, he justifies the decisions of those who might vote Reform, as at least they will vote for the real Reform deal.

But you can never count Rishi Sunak out. I mentioned him showing a little gumption in the BBC debate against Starmer, showed some grit, some bottom. Something we really hadn't seen from either leader. Well, Channel 4 News went undercover to Clayton, the constituency where Nigel Farage is standing for Reform and the seat most likely in Britain to return a Reform MP to Parliament. They managed to find some Reform activists and canvassers with blatantly racist views. Now, it may be to the country's credit, and even surprise, that Rishi Sunak, being of Indian parents and a Hindu, has gone relatively unmentioned since his election. It's just not been a thing. But for one of the activists especially it was. Farage may have gotten away with saying that Rishi just didn't understand British culture, but his activists called him "a f-cking p-ki". A racial slur that goes back to use on the streets of Britain in the seventies by fascist thugs of the National Front. But then Rishi not only condemned Reform for using such people but also used the phrase himself and how it had been used against him when he was younger. Which is a first for a British Prime Minister – at least, in front of a microphone. But added to that grit, gumption and bottom we were talking about. It may only be a small thing. But right now, Rishi needs everything he can get.

Tomorrow… Nigel Farage and the time I met him in a pub during the first Christmas lockdown. Yeah, that was a thing.

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