The Telegraph’s associate editor, Gordon Rayner, thinks fauxservative PM Fishy Sunak is hoping to cash in on some good economic news (drop in inflation, return to economic growth) and on the first “Rwanda flights” actually leaving the country. He is also trying to outflank the Reform Party on the Tories’s right, giving them less time to get their act together and for erstwhile Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage to make up his mind about leading Reform in the elections.
I frankly think something else is at work: he reminds me of Bernie Madoff saying “enough”, and instead of making more heroic measures to stave off the inevitable collapse of his Ponzi scheme a little while longer, throwing in the towel. (Diana Henriques’s book-length account of the scandal is riveting reading, BTW.)
The comments on the Telegraph article are, as expected, pretty brutal, such as that he is pining for how own flight to Santa Monica, CA rather than for more Rwanda flights.
Polls expect a clear victory for Labour (Keir Starmer doesn’t come with the toxic baggage of Jeremy Corbyn), but it cannot be discounted that if Fishy Rishy had waited, the Reform Party would displace lots of other “wet Tories” and the once-proud Conservative and Unionist Party would face an extinction-level event, rather than a mere electoral bloodbath.
Spin, strangeness, and charm 