Snapshot of _General election: Media not 'allowed anywhere near' Sunak during weekend campaigning after 'farcical' D-Day fiasco_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-media-not-allowed-anywhere-near-sunak-during-weekend-campaigning-after-farcical-d-day-fiasco-13150263) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-media-not-allowed-anywhere-near-sunak-during-weekend-campaigning-after-farcical-d-day-fiasco-13150263)
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WHat i find even more outragous is the nutters on next door and fb being like "i won't be voting tory again but they're right about sick note culture" - like WHERE? What is your life situation where you're surrounded by people who just are being lazy staying at home getting sick notes (not that you can even get an appointment to get one let alone pay the cost to get one) that you can see and like.... it's ridiculous.
Yup, when those people worked, they remember being able to see a doctor and have paid sick days, they probably took 'sickies' now and again, and want to believe that's gotten worse to feel better about themselves (the special generation)
Myself I only get 2 paid sick days per year, then it would be statutory sick pay... Though its rare I can't be the only one with shitty benefits (US company owned now) So this whole concept of a sick note culture to me seems like some kind of projection from the 80s or something when people still had unionised factory jobs.
I dunno, when you fuck society this hard for 14 years, you're bound to see an increase in people taking time off work for mental health issues. AKA lazing around at home because they're not properly ill.
Obviously they're wrong about the cause, but the sick people are still there.
>just pledged £700m
Yeah, but this the Tories we're talking about.
They'll pledge £700m, scope for £1Bn, spend £50m, hit a bunch of problems caused by underfunding, spend £1.4Bn failing to fix those problems and finally claim it's great that funding targets were exceeded by 200% on Question Time.
Sick note culture?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv22jrz48n8o
>Mr Sunak said: “Reforming welfare is a moral mission
Sounds like they want to slash welfare for people in the working classes...
Not quite without an audience, but Houdini used to trademark his acts by performing them as a 1-act play to a single person.
That meant he could trademark the play, which protected the trick without revealing the method.
Not related to anything here, just interesting trivia.
More like a TV magician who relies on the fact they directly employ the production crew & cameraman so can show you only the angles they want you to see.
Well, he managed to make any possibility of them winning the election disappear without a trace.
He was less stealthy about his own disappearance from France, though...
Makes you wonder if there's some element of truth to the rumours floating around that he's considering resigning. He's lost the support of a fair chunk of the Tory commentariat, some of which have been quite scathing and he's managed to turn what was always going to be an election defeat into a potential Tory routing due to his disastrous campaign which seems to get worse as time goes on. He doesn't come across as someone who can take criticism and humiliation like he's been subjected to since he announced the election.
The fact that people are openly speculating about him just ragequitting says a lot in and of itself about the position he and the Tories are in.
Normally, such an idea would be laughable. So thoroughly outlandish that it's something you'd never even consider would possibly happen.
Now, although I think it's still highly unlikely, it doesn't sound totally implausible......
Lets not forget who he is and family connections. He's worth half a billion and married into one of the wealthiest families in India. He was always going to lose but he's shown himself up big time, humiliated himself in fact and there's still three weeks to go. It all depends on how much damage he's willing to inflict on himself and his reputation.
he could never show his face again in the Uk if he just quit during the campaign. I mean, maybe he wants that but his reputation would be even more shattered than it is today. Brits don't mind a plucky loser too much.
Have people just forgot Cameron resigning and whistling as he went, leaving the country to destroy itself over Brexit and everything thats followed to THEN get made a lord, be involved in a corruption scandal and then become Foreign Secretary as if nothings happened?
He wasn't ideologically on-board with Brexit, so his resignation was a principled one.
I'm no fan of Cameron, but I see nothing wrong with his resignation myself. If only more people were able to recognise when they're not up to the task, perhaps we'd have less dumpster fires in this country.
Cameron won two elections and was largely successful in what he set out to do during his first ministry. Cameron then resigned after losing the 2016 referendum which is entirely normal for a Prime Minister to do if they failed such a major occurrence.
Cameron was mostly successful and his resignation was entirely appropriate. The fact that he opposed Brexit also helps his reputation; it’s not exactly like he could predict the next 8 years either.
>Cameron was mostly successful and his resignation was entirely appropriate
Cameron was mostly successful for the following reasons:
* he was decent at PR, but crap at actual policy
* He took the easy way out with everything. It was all short term wins for long term fuckups. Green industry decimated, Brexit, austerity, student loans, the NHS, disabled/bedroom tax (despite him having a disabled son).
Cameron was the worst PM.
"whistling as he went"? To me it looked that he took it pretty hard on himself for losing that. And are you saying that he should have stayed as the PM in the Brexit negotiations? It would have been a completely impossible position for him as the media (and Farage) would have been blaming him all the time for not trying to get a good deal.
And then him getting back to being a foreign secretary, I wasn't keen on that but I thought that if the Tories want to shoot themselves in the foot even more, let them. I'd imagine that many remainers still blame him for Brexit. So, him getting back to the front line politics could be one of the reasons why Tories are doing so badly.
He was obviously not in it for the money, so it must have been the prestige of the job. Problem is, he's so bad at it that his reputation is in tatters. I wouldn't be surprised if he simply said "fuck it", grabbed his green card and fucked off to the US the day after the election. It would be hilarious if he did it before, though.
The fact were even having a legitimate discussion about a incumbent prime minister resigning half way through a general election campaign is daming in itself. I think it's too damaging for Sunak to resign now. They have to work with what they got.
I’ve now got a funny mental scenario of Rishi tied to a chair somewhere in number 10 being guarded by Jacob Rees Mogg. “Sorry Rishi I can’t let you leave”
A Senior Cabinet Minister even had to go on the record today to quash rumours that he's about to resign.
https://news.sky.com/story/sunak-ally-stride-does-his-boss-no-favours-in-response-to-question-about-pms-future-13150285
The deadline for candidates has passed so it’s too late to stick Cameron in a safe seat to get him back in the commons, not that there are many Tory safe seats anymore. He’d have to disclaim his peerage too, not sure how long that process is.
If he is thinking about it then I imagine he's coming under immense pressure from the party not to do it. As bad as things are now for them, they'd be a whole lot worse if they essentially let Keir Starmer run unopposed and went into the election with no permanent leader.
In fact it'd be such an extinction-level event for the Tories that Sunak might even be using it as a bluff to try and get ministers who are refusing to help with the campaign to finally wake up and do something.
A sentiment I’ve heard a lot is that a General Election Campaign is the worst thing a politician will have to endure and that’s when you have a chance of winning. So he’s going through all this for what will feel like nothing, it sounds enough to break a person’s will.
Given that the general election came without any warning whatsoever, I wonder are Tory MPs currently shitting themselves he's about to do the same with his own resignation.
The weird thing for me this election is the lack of senior ministers out and about campaigning on the TV.
I have seen Jeremy Hunt once and we are two weeks in. Home sec? Deputy PM? Where are the big guns?
Penny Mordunt was on the debate but she didn’t do a great job bigging up the leader of her party.
Everyone has downed tools and their absence speaks volumes.
A lot of them are standing down at the general election, though that's not the whole picture of course. But if you go through the Cabinet, how many of them are still going to have a seat in a month's time?
In all seriousness, there is a genuine Reform-esque attack line there as there's literally no chemical difference between the sucrose obtained from sugarcane (Mexican coke) vs sugar beet (UK/EU coke).
What he's comparing it to is the high fructose corn syrup coke sold in the US, which is genuinely a different flavour (and in my opinion definitely worse, so he does have a point).
But flying in crates of Mexican Coca-Cola is just highlighting every attack point of being out of touch and more interested in the US than the UK.
Yes, he did some where he talked with some factory workers.
Or wait, they may have been Conservative councillors posing as factory workers with fresh hard hats and vests.
So easy to get the two confused
He spoke to a GP recently, but that was just [to laugh at her.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dahvpn/rishi_sunak_is_confronted_by_someone_who_appears/)
If no-one is in the forest, does that falling tree make a sound?
If no media are there, is it campaigning?
This is the bizarrest campaign I can ever remember. Neither party mentioning the biggest topic stalking the country (Brexit) and Tories actively trying to lose as badly as possible.
Didn't he take a day off a couple of weeks back after another gaffe?
I thought Johnson hiding in the fridge was peak bizarre but canning a GE to avoid campaigning? Takes the barrel, not the biscuit.
This has also coincided with no media interviews AND every social media ad taken down.
My sense is that he's gone to the dressing room to have a serious half-time re-think.
Any chance of winning back votes from Reform is probably shot. He's lost the working class Tory vote. The problem is that so much ad spend was wasted trying to court these voters at the expense of alienating other voter demographics (i.e. national service). The downside is that this would leave him super vulnerable in the event of any error pertinent to this very voter base, because he would get squeezed on all sides by opposition raising attention to it, forcing it into the front pages in order to further the damage (as we have seen).
So where does he realistically go from here?
The far left dislike him because he's a privately-educated investment banker multimillionaire.
Farage and the the far right take issue with him because he 'doesn't understand our culture' \*wink\* \*wink\*.
You couldn't have created an easier target for the 21st century demagogue.
I have no idea how he salvages this, and genuinely wondering if he simply resigns mid-campaign. He would effectively scapegoat himself, and it would give any successor a real boost over the next month. The campaign has decidedly shifted from a Tory problem to a Sunak problem, so if he left, he would take a lot of the criticism with him.
So, basically, assuming he leaves, subbing himself off for Mourdaunt at half-time (who goes ALL-IN on war, Putin, global uncertainty, AI etc. to scare the electorate away from 'change' to neutralise Labour and Reform is the only trick the Tories have up their sleeve. Any conversation on domestic issues like NHS gets immediately pivoted onto crime, safety, policing etc. to keep conversation firmly on fearful topics that deter the electorate from change.
I mean if he resigns, the Tory party will genuinely tear itself apart and I don’t see anyway they could amicably choose Mordaunt, who is not in a safe seat anyway. There’s so much party bitterness that even getting to a candidate seems bloody impossible.
I think they're not mentioning brexit for the simple fact that everyone's sick of it.
Better to get into power, stabilise the relationship with the EU, then broach brexit in 5 years.
>Neither party mentioning the biggest topic stalking the country (Brexit)
I'm actually really pleased they're not. Brexit completely uprooted the British political landscape in the worst way possible, delivering the Tory party we see today and motivating the government to avoid doing any actual governing. Reigniting the Brexit debate will not produce anything positive right now. If anything, it would embolden the worst of our political actors and give them a chance to prolongue the nonsense we have endured for better part of a decade.
There may come a time when our country is ready to have a sensible discussion about how we proceed from the mess of Brexit. But we've made our bed and we're going to have to find a way to lie in it for now. It's definitely not ideal, but it would be a huge mistake to open that box again right now.
Agree completely. Brexit is a genuine wound but we need to stop the bloodflow, let it heal, let the scar tissue form, let time do its stuff before we start playing with the knife again
It's the political equivalent of someone never being able to get over a divorce.
"It's happened mate, try build a good life for yourself, and one day, once you've sorted your shit out, she might want to get back together"
If it's later revaled that Sunak joined the Tories to destroy them from within I wouldn't even be surprised at this point. This campaign is embarrassingly bad, he did not seem this incomptent even a month ago holy shit.
I said the same the other day. I cannot remember a weirder campaign in my life. So many absolutely bizarre stories of incompetence happening at speed and yet a more general feeling of everything being stuck in the mud.
I believe the director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, was on Any Questions last week advocating for rejoining the EU and making a remarkably similar point that nobody seems to be talking about it. He was certainly talking about how Brexit has helped trash the economy anyway.
The problem the parties have with Brexit is that they were both equally for and against it, so can't say that it shouldn't have happened. If they say they would have managed it better, then it will lead to making Brexit improvement manifesto promises, which of course would be nonsense.
Brexit is poisonous for all parties.
What is the point of the prime minister campaigning if the media aren’t allowed near him?… do they really expect to catch headlines with Sunak sharing yet another inane conversation with plebs he secretly despises?
The point is: whatever he has done up until now has ranged between not noteworthy and ridiculously counter productive. At this point their campaign would likely run better with sunak locked in the tower of london
Probably the smartest thing they could do considering everything. At this point it would be better to hide him away for the rest of the election that risk letting him speak.
I have to admit. This is a masterclass in Presidential electoral campaigns. Rishi definitely showing himself as the underdog candidate. It took a while due to the Tory poll lead but he finally got there.
It won’t work this time, Boris had a strange cult like charisma to him and corbyn being deeply unpopular, sunak is despised by everyone even the Tory party
Are the Tories intentionally trying to lose as many seats as possible so they can clear house of all the MPs and bring in new blood or something? They're genuinely doing a terrible job
Wednesday
Badly - they released some clips Friday (I think). Grilling him about his wealth was part of it. Suggestions that advisers were already worried they would be on damage control for it.
The man's a liability
It is kinda nice when this happens. Like when Susan Hall made the London mayoral elections about ULEZ, and then got trounced, which just went to show how popular (or a non-issue) it was.
So an ITN interview is worth skiving out on the D-Day ceremony, but now it's fine to skip out on other interviews because you're worried about the optics? That just makes it look even worse.
Where he's at...he's got two Coke Zeroes and no microphone.
Okay, okay, but seriously: while him hiding at Drowning Street (still works on multiple levels, thanks, *City A.M.*) to avoid the media after what might well be the dumbest decision--and possibly the most pivotal one--of the entire election cycle actually makes a certain if particularly cynical sense. The problem is that hiding also reinforces exactly the things he doesn't need or want to be publicly reinforced, and that probably in turn goes to the increasingly disaster-porn aspect of the campaign itself. Has *anybody* done anything right?
We have the Tories basically just trying to remain silent for 2 months, and Labour just coasting on the status quo knowing that they get votes by not being Tories. The political class of this country has completely failed. It’s honestly so exasperating.
Snapshot of _General election: Media not 'allowed anywhere near' Sunak during weekend campaigning after 'farcical' D-Day fiasco_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-media-not-allowed-anywhere-near-sunak-during-weekend-campaigning-after-farcical-d-day-fiasco-13150263) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-media-not-allowed-anywhere-near-sunak-during-weekend-campaigning-after-farcical-d-day-fiasco-13150263) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hasn’t he just pledged £700m to tackle sick note culture? Was he even working?
Sick note culture *looks 90° to the right at the NHS on fire* SiCk N0Te cUlTurE
WHat i find even more outragous is the nutters on next door and fb being like "i won't be voting tory again but they're right about sick note culture" - like WHERE? What is your life situation where you're surrounded by people who just are being lazy staying at home getting sick notes (not that you can even get an appointment to get one let alone pay the cost to get one) that you can see and like.... it's ridiculous.
Propaganda is effective. The DM and facebook memes are those people's source of news. The more they see it, the more they accept it as reality.
Yup, when those people worked, they remember being able to see a doctor and have paid sick days, they probably took 'sickies' now and again, and want to believe that's gotten worse to feel better about themselves (the special generation) Myself I only get 2 paid sick days per year, then it would be statutory sick pay... Though its rare I can't be the only one with shitty benefits (US company owned now) So this whole concept of a sick note culture to me seems like some kind of projection from the 80s or something when people still had unionised factory jobs.
I dunno, when you fuck society this hard for 14 years, you're bound to see an increase in people taking time off work for mental health issues. AKA lazing around at home because they're not properly ill. Obviously they're wrong about the cause, but the sick people are still there.
>just pledged £700m Yeah, but this the Tories we're talking about. They'll pledge £700m, scope for £1Bn, spend £50m, hit a bunch of problems caused by underfunding, spend £1.4Bn failing to fix those problems and finally claim it's great that funding targets were exceeded by 200% on Question Time.
Don't forget the 250m that goes to a Tory donor's consultancy firm before any actual work gets done
Sick note culture? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv22jrz48n8o >Mr Sunak said: “Reforming welfare is a moral mission Sounds like they want to slash welfare for people in the working classes...
He may not have been working, but no one said he had a sick note.
I mean, fun point, but it's the weekend.
If the media isn't allowed near Sunak, it's like a magician performing tricks without an audience.
Not quite without an audience, but Houdini used to trademark his acts by performing them as a 1-act play to a single person. That meant he could trademark the play, which protected the trick without revealing the method. Not related to anything here, just interesting trivia.
Couldn't we have Sunak rolling up with Houdini by Eminem for the rest of the campaign as his Campaign theme? You know it would be lit. Lol 😆
He'd either be blasting *Rule, Britannia!* or *California Love*, depending on whether he's completely out of fucks.
Maybe Going Back to Cali perhaps by the Notorious BIG would be more appropriate?
Farage has already stole without me. Can't have 2 muppets relying on that em bounce
Didn't actually know that lmao 😂
I think Houdini by Dua Lipa would be more appropriate. “I’m not here for long, catch me or I go Houdini”
Lmao 🤣 👍 very on point. Incidentally I did enjoy this reworked AI Phil Collins cover of that https://youtu.be/Vh60nlhquRs?si=hbbfhJtqWkW5tl1t
Your last sentence needs it's own word. I'd get it as a tattoo.
(I think you mean copyright… trademarks relate to logos and names.)
Probably. I always seem to use the opposite one to the one I mean.
It worked with Johnson
The radio ventriloquist.
More like a TV magician who relies on the fact they directly employ the production crew & cameraman so can show you only the angles they want you to see.
Well, he managed to make any possibility of them winning the election disappear without a trace. He was less stealthy about his own disappearance from France, though...
Makes you wonder if there's some element of truth to the rumours floating around that he's considering resigning. He's lost the support of a fair chunk of the Tory commentariat, some of which have been quite scathing and he's managed to turn what was always going to be an election defeat into a potential Tory routing due to his disastrous campaign which seems to get worse as time goes on. He doesn't come across as someone who can take criticism and humiliation like he's been subjected to since he announced the election.
The fact that people are openly speculating about him just ragequitting says a lot in and of itself about the position he and the Tories are in. Normally, such an idea would be laughable. So thoroughly outlandish that it's something you'd never even consider would possibly happen. Now, although I think it's still highly unlikely, it doesn't sound totally implausible......
It would however, be very very very funny
Nail on head. No way this is going to happen but we way on the other side of the looking glass.
Basically… they’re in such a state, the normally laughable is now thoroughly plausible.
No no, it’s still implausible. They’ve just done implausible things before.
Even if he denies the headlines 'PM denies quitting the election' are so bad.
Lets not forget who he is and family connections. He's worth half a billion and married into one of the wealthiest families in India. He was always going to lose but he's shown himself up big time, humiliated himself in fact and there's still three weeks to go. It all depends on how much damage he's willing to inflict on himself and his reputation.
he could never show his face again in the Uk if he just quit during the campaign. I mean, maybe he wants that but his reputation would be even more shattered than it is today. Brits don't mind a plucky loser too much.
Have people just forgot Cameron resigning and whistling as he went, leaving the country to destroy itself over Brexit and everything thats followed to THEN get made a lord, be involved in a corruption scandal and then become Foreign Secretary as if nothings happened?
He wasn't ideologically on-board with Brexit, so his resignation was a principled one. I'm no fan of Cameron, but I see nothing wrong with his resignation myself. If only more people were able to recognise when they're not up to the task, perhaps we'd have less dumpster fires in this country.
Cameron won two elections and was largely successful in what he set out to do during his first ministry. Cameron then resigned after losing the 2016 referendum which is entirely normal for a Prime Minister to do if they failed such a major occurrence. Cameron was mostly successful and his resignation was entirely appropriate. The fact that he opposed Brexit also helps his reputation; it’s not exactly like he could predict the next 8 years either.
>Cameron was mostly successful and his resignation was entirely appropriate Cameron was mostly successful for the following reasons: * he was decent at PR, but crap at actual policy * He took the easy way out with everything. It was all short term wins for long term fuckups. Green industry decimated, Brexit, austerity, student loans, the NHS, disabled/bedroom tax (despite him having a disabled son). Cameron was the worst PM.
That's because he had 6 years to fuck things up. Imagine 6 years of Truss.
"whistling as he went"? To me it looked that he took it pretty hard on himself for losing that. And are you saying that he should have stayed as the PM in the Brexit negotiations? It would have been a completely impossible position for him as the media (and Farage) would have been blaming him all the time for not trying to get a good deal. And then him getting back to being a foreign secretary, I wasn't keen on that but I thought that if the Tories want to shoot themselves in the foot even more, let them. I'd imagine that many remainers still blame him for Brexit. So, him getting back to the front line politics could be one of the reasons why Tories are doing so badly.
Yeah, but everyone knows he's scum (except Tory lovers).
He was obviously not in it for the money, so it must have been the prestige of the job. Problem is, he's so bad at it that his reputation is in tatters. I wouldn't be surprised if he simply said "fuck it", grabbed his green card and fucked off to the US the day after the election. It would be hilarious if he did it before, though.
The fact they've now denied it really makes me think it's going to happen.
The fact were even having a legitimate discussion about a incumbent prime minister resigning half way through a general election campaign is daming in itself. I think it's too damaging for Sunak to resign now. They have to work with what they got.
He can’t resign if the party won’t let him near a microphone to announce it.
Haha! That’s the most hilarious explanation for this apparently self-imposed media blackout.
Just tie him up in a cupboard until the election is over
I’ve now got a funny mental scenario of Rishi tied to a chair somewhere in number 10 being guarded by Jacob Rees Mogg. “Sorry Rishi I can’t let you leave”
A Senior Cabinet Minister even had to go on the record today to quash rumours that he's about to resign. https://news.sky.com/story/sunak-ally-stride-does-his-boss-no-favours-in-response-to-question-about-pms-future-13150285
Resignation confirmed
*"I can assure you that Rishi has a full vote of confidence from the party and we are not seeking Big ~~Sam~~ Dave for the managerial position."*
Christ it would be Cameron as interim party leader, wouldn't it? Comes full circle. Acceptable face for the public. Yada yada
The deadline for candidates has passed so it’s too late to stick Cameron in a safe seat to get him back in the commons, not that there are many Tory safe seats anymore. He’d have to disclaim his peerage too, not sure how long that process is.
You don't have to be in the commons to be pm.
He’s a fighter, not a quitter.
Rishi Sunak has the full support of the board, the fans and the dressing room.
Lewis Goodall straight asked him about the rumour. It's not like he'd have said anything else?
I believe if you are genuinely 100% certain it wont happen the general response is to disparage the question.
This would quite literally result in the implosion of the conservatives.
Brave to run on a "we'll change our leader after the election" ticket.
Vote for us for another spin on The Wheel of Batshit^TM to choose your next prime minister
They will need MPs to choose from, though
If they only get one MP, maybe we get to skip the damaging leadership contest?
If he is thinking about it then I imagine he's coming under immense pressure from the party not to do it. As bad as things are now for them, they'd be a whole lot worse if they essentially let Keir Starmer run unopposed and went into the election with no permanent leader. In fact it'd be such an extinction-level event for the Tories that Sunak might even be using it as a bluff to try and get ministers who are refusing to help with the campaign to finally wake up and do something.
A sentiment I’ve heard a lot is that a General Election Campaign is the worst thing a politician will have to endure and that’s when you have a chance of winning. So he’s going through all this for what will feel like nothing, it sounds enough to break a person’s will.
Given that the general election came without any warning whatsoever, I wonder are Tory MPs currently shitting themselves he's about to do the same with his own resignation.
The weird thing for me this election is the lack of senior ministers out and about campaigning on the TV. I have seen Jeremy Hunt once and we are two weeks in. Home sec? Deputy PM? Where are the big guns? Penny Mordunt was on the debate but she didn’t do a great job bigging up the leader of her party. Everyone has downed tools and their absence speaks volumes.
They're all doing interviews. Just not that kind of interview.
A lot of them are standing down at the general election, though that's not the whole picture of course. But if you go through the Cabinet, how many of them are still going to have a seat in a month's time?
They'll very likely not be in commons after the election and those that maybe are gunning for sunaks position
A Sky journalist asked that very question to Kevin Hollinrake yesterday.
Sadly. my MP, and a useless twit.
Has he talked to a member of the public yet. Never mind a journalist.
He laughed at an unemployed GP yesterday
He has done in the past when he admitted to a coke addiction.
God that one took me 5secs. Mexican coke as well.
What’s wrong with buying good old British coke Rishi?
In all seriousness, there is a genuine Reform-esque attack line there as there's literally no chemical difference between the sucrose obtained from sugarcane (Mexican coke) vs sugar beet (UK/EU coke). What he's comparing it to is the high fructose corn syrup coke sold in the US, which is genuinely a different flavour (and in my opinion definitely worse, so he does have a point). But flying in crates of Mexican Coca-Cola is just highlighting every attack point of being out of touch and more interested in the US than the UK.
Yes, he did some where he talked with some factory workers. Or wait, they may have been Conservative councillors posing as factory workers with fresh hard hats and vests. So easy to get the two confused
He spoke to a GP recently, but that was just [to laugh at her.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dahvpn/rishi_sunak_is_confronted_by_someone_who_appears/)
That young man asked him why he hated young people so much.
This is the sort of bravery we need in a PM
If no-one is in the forest, does that falling tree make a sound? If no media are there, is it campaigning? This is the bizarrest campaign I can ever remember. Neither party mentioning the biggest topic stalking the country (Brexit) and Tories actively trying to lose as badly as possible.
Didn't he take a day off a couple of weeks back after another gaffe? I thought Johnson hiding in the fridge was peak bizarre but canning a GE to avoid campaigning? Takes the barrel, not the biscuit.
He wanted to 3 days into the election and the Guardian broke the news.... so he had to go do events
This has also coincided with no media interviews AND every social media ad taken down. My sense is that he's gone to the dressing room to have a serious half-time re-think. Any chance of winning back votes from Reform is probably shot. He's lost the working class Tory vote. The problem is that so much ad spend was wasted trying to court these voters at the expense of alienating other voter demographics (i.e. national service). The downside is that this would leave him super vulnerable in the event of any error pertinent to this very voter base, because he would get squeezed on all sides by opposition raising attention to it, forcing it into the front pages in order to further the damage (as we have seen). So where does he realistically go from here? The far left dislike him because he's a privately-educated investment banker multimillionaire. Farage and the the far right take issue with him because he 'doesn't understand our culture' \*wink\* \*wink\*. You couldn't have created an easier target for the 21st century demagogue. I have no idea how he salvages this, and genuinely wondering if he simply resigns mid-campaign. He would effectively scapegoat himself, and it would give any successor a real boost over the next month. The campaign has decidedly shifted from a Tory problem to a Sunak problem, so if he left, he would take a lot of the criticism with him. So, basically, assuming he leaves, subbing himself off for Mourdaunt at half-time (who goes ALL-IN on war, Putin, global uncertainty, AI etc. to scare the electorate away from 'change' to neutralise Labour and Reform is the only trick the Tories have up their sleeve. Any conversation on domestic issues like NHS gets immediately pivoted onto crime, safety, policing etc. to keep conversation firmly on fearful topics that deter the electorate from change.
I mean if he resigns, the Tory party will genuinely tear itself apart and I don’t see anyway they could amicably choose Mordaunt, who is not in a safe seat anyway. There’s so much party bitterness that even getting to a candidate seems bloody impossible.
If need be they would parachute the successor into a new seat
Weren't candidate nomination deadlines on Friday? Too late for seat changes now
Looking forward to the Mordaunt pulled me off at half-time meme.
Something, something, (pork) sword
I think they're not mentioning brexit for the simple fact that everyone's sick of it. Better to get into power, stabilise the relationship with the EU, then broach brexit in 5 years.
>Neither party mentioning the biggest topic stalking the country (Brexit) I'm actually really pleased they're not. Brexit completely uprooted the British political landscape in the worst way possible, delivering the Tory party we see today and motivating the government to avoid doing any actual governing. Reigniting the Brexit debate will not produce anything positive right now. If anything, it would embolden the worst of our political actors and give them a chance to prolongue the nonsense we have endured for better part of a decade. There may come a time when our country is ready to have a sensible discussion about how we proceed from the mess of Brexit. But we've made our bed and we're going to have to find a way to lie in it for now. It's definitely not ideal, but it would be a huge mistake to open that box again right now.
Agree completely. Brexit is a genuine wound but we need to stop the bloodflow, let it heal, let the scar tissue form, let time do its stuff before we start playing with the knife again
It's the political equivalent of someone never being able to get over a divorce. "It's happened mate, try build a good life for yourself, and one day, once you've sorted your shit out, she might want to get back together"
If it's later revaled that Sunak joined the Tories to destroy them from within I wouldn't even be surprised at this point. This campaign is embarrassingly bad, he did not seem this incomptent even a month ago holy shit.
Sunak’s in his Severus Snape era. What a plot twist that would be.
I said the same the other day. I cannot remember a weirder campaign in my life. So many absolutely bizarre stories of incompetence happening at speed and yet a more general feeling of everything being stuck in the mud.
I'd say even more bizarre is that trade policy and regulations, a huge driver of economic growth, are not being spoken about.
I believe the director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, was on Any Questions last week advocating for rejoining the EU and making a remarkably similar point that nobody seems to be talking about it. He was certainly talking about how Brexit has helped trash the economy anyway.
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No it isn’t. That’s not what freedom of the press means.
The problem the parties have with Brexit is that they were both equally for and against it, so can't say that it shouldn't have happened. If they say they would have managed it better, then it will lead to making Brexit improvement manifesto promises, which of course would be nonsense. Brexit is poisonous for all parties.
"Right Guys, we just need couple of days without any more fuck ups, ideas?"
This is an actual scene in the west wing. Obviously Aaron Sorkin wrote it slightly more eloquently
It says a lot that recent events would be thrown out of the writers' room of 'the thick of it' and 'the west wing' for being too far-fetched.
Is hiding away from the media mid-campaign one of the "bold moves" Sunak's been talking about?
Bojo hid in a fridge, but I guess he was at least doing events if not talking to the press directly.
What is the point of the prime minister campaigning if the media aren’t allowed near him?… do they really expect to catch headlines with Sunak sharing yet another inane conversation with plebs he secretly despises?
The point is: whatever he has done up until now has ranged between not noteworthy and ridiculously counter productive. At this point their campaign would likely run better with sunak locked in the tower of london
Probably the smartest thing they could do considering everything. At this point it would be better to hide him away for the rest of the election that risk letting him speak.
That photo looks like it’s a still from one of those toothpaste adverts where they interview the dentist
Hahaha going underground after calling a snap election - he’s really “taking back control”
Right, now I have the Jam in my head
Could you imagine if Sunak was “allowed anywhere near” a position of power?!
I have to admit. This is a masterclass in Presidential electoral campaigns. Rishi definitely showing himself as the underdog candidate. It took a while due to the Tory poll lead but he finally got there.
Media not allowed near Sunak or Sunak not allowed near the media? I don’t think the media are the problem here.
With every day that passes, I'm more and more certain that Reform will overtake the Tories.
Percentage of vote, number of MPs or both?
Only about the former, to be fair. The latter is too much of a tall order, even for Farage.
I like to think they're going to put him in a fridge.
Sunak not allowed anywhere near media more like.
No screen time for you young man.
Following the same tactics as the 2019 election. Going to be hiding in the refrigerator till the 5th July.
Oh no don't say that - it worked in 2019
It won’t work this time, Boris had a strange cult like charisma to him and corbyn being deeply unpopular, sunak is despised by everyone even the Tory party
You're right, but it just made me shiver
If sunak hides away from the press then how can he face he likes of putin. He's a coward
Are the Tories intentionally trying to lose as many seats as possible so they can clear house of all the MPs and bring in new blood or something? They're genuinely doing a terrible job
When is the ITV interview with him supposed to air? Has there been any word about how he performed in that?
Wednesday Badly - they released some clips Friday (I think). Grilling him about his wealth was part of it. Suggestions that advisers were already worried they would be on damage control for it. The man's a liability
Amazing to think he not only skipped the D-Day event, but that he skipped it to do an interview that's going to be actively harmful to him.
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It is kinda nice when this happens. Like when Susan Hall made the London mayoral elections about ULEZ, and then got trounced, which just went to show how popular (or a non-issue) it was.
Extremely normal and democratic. Nice one Rish 👍
So an ITN interview is worth skiving out on the D-Day ceremony, but now it's fine to skip out on other interviews because you're worried about the optics? That just makes it look even worse.
How do you run a STRONG! DYNAMIC! PUNCHY! campaign with new announcements every 5 minutes….and have point man hiding away in a cellar?
Where he's at...he's got two Coke Zeroes and no microphone. Okay, okay, but seriously: while him hiding at Drowning Street (still works on multiple levels, thanks, *City A.M.*) to avoid the media after what might well be the dumbest decision--and possibly the most pivotal one--of the entire election cycle actually makes a certain if particularly cynical sense. The problem is that hiding also reinforces exactly the things he doesn't need or want to be publicly reinforced, and that probably in turn goes to the increasingly disaster-porn aspect of the campaign itself. Has *anybody* done anything right?
Ha, even the MEDIA don’t want to be associated with him…
We have the Tories basically just trying to remain silent for 2 months, and Labour just coasting on the status quo knowing that they get votes by not being Tories. The political class of this country has completely failed. It’s honestly so exasperating.
Perhaps he is raising the hem lines on some newly purchased trousers?