There are two types of people who would put themselves up to replace Truss given how awful a situation the Tories were in -
a clear eyed realist who knew they’d be handing leadership over the Labor and immediately went about making life as hard for them as it could be to minimize their period in opposition
a fabulist who thought they had some unique ability to turn it around and win
Rishi has come across since day 1 in the cabinet as being the latter, and those people tend not to want to listen to the harsh truths of established political advisors. Instead they shop around for people (in the US there is a thriving consultant market for this) willing to tell them whatever they want to hear. The result is typically catastrophic, but the consultants don’t care because they don’t market in success, they market in selling a story to gullible politicians who need to be told they are the prettiest girl at the dance.
Rishi is ill advised trying to play the normal-bloke-no-Sky card. Boarding school. Investment banker. Hedge fund fella. Career back and forth between California and London. Married into a billionaire family.
It’s about as tone deaf as the time when Boris said he didn’t know how much a loaf of bread or a pint of milk cost, but he did know the price of champagne.
During Cameron’s first term as PM, the Prime Minister had a series of meetings with Rishi Sunak’s father in law. It’s a presumed a large donation to the party was discussed, and then a couple of things happened. Infosys started winning a lot of Government contracts, and Rishi Sunak was gifted - out of nowhere - the safe Tory seat of Richmond, and shortly after that, a job in the treasury.
Both of @Limiescouse descriptions are opportunists. Both personality types saw it and went for it while having completely different views on the job they were getting into.
People with privilege don’t generally see it. Possibly the aristocracy do, but in general most people get very defensive when you point out that they have privilege (and start talking nonsense about not having Sky TV.)
When I was doing government stats we always addressed things in terms of disadvantage. Partly because it is simpler to address and also it is far simpler when doing analysis. A colleague went on a seminar about inequality in America and they did it all in reverse, in terms of privileges: white privileged, wealth privilege, male privilege etc. When people are told that they have these, they immediately seem to become rather irate about it, probably because they have other factors which far outweigh the supposed advantage that they have.
Watching the election debate last night was excruciating. Farage, as expected, was blaming all the country’s woes on immigration, while Penny Mordaunt, representing the Conservatives, turned every question into the same party line.
“Who’s going to win the Euros, Penny?”
“Well, I don’t know much about football, but I do know that Labour will put up your taxes!”
Every time I see Farage on TV, or hear him on the radio, I am reminded of the Simpsons short “Attack Of The 50-foot Eyesores”, from Treehouse Of Horror VI.
He is only so prominent because the rightwing media gives him so much airtime.
Pay no attention to him, and he’ll wither and die.
He acknowledged that the party was not organised enough to win seats widely and that it would “have to raise a lot of money, very quickly” in order to be competitive against the other parties.
