If he weren’t so soulless, it would have been hard not to feel for Rishi Sunak yesterday. As the rain cascaded down on his £10,000 suit and “Things Can Only Get Better” drifted through the cold May air, a tiny part of his brain that isn’t filled with complex derivatives must have been screaming, “RUN, RISHI, RUN!”

Back inside Number 10, you could almost see the panic in your mind’s eye.
“Quick guys, get a brolly!”

“Christ no, we can’t go full Steve McLaren. He’ll just have to get drenched.”

Speaking to a Nursery

The speech was standard Sunak, told like a story to kids in their first term of nursery. Sunak had little to offer, essentially accepting being inept but arguing it would be even worse under Keir Starmer. If you don’t vote for the man who wrote off around £10 billion in Covid scams, you’re in big trouble.

No one quite knows why Sunak called an election. It could be that economic figures are showing signs of being awful rather than catastrophic. Maybe he has a job starting in California on July 5th. Or perhaps one of his tech bros in the world of AI has created a video of Starmer setting kittens alight? Apparently, AI is now so advanced it’s popular among techies who get paid lots of money to create false images and videos. In the US, Joe Biden could even become the first-ever dead president.

Why Be PM With Millions in the Bank?

While no one knows why Sunak called an election, some are wondering why he wanted to be PM in the first place. As far as I am aware, the salary of the PM is around £170,000. While that is a very good wage for the majority of the population (albeit a humble one for a PM), for Sunak, it is like loose change down the back of a Chesterfield worth more than my house.

Is it a sense of duty? Has he made so much money that it’s time to give back to the country that took in his parents as immigrants and then allowed his obvious academic genius to flourish? If that were the case, it would be quite admirable. Sadly, all signs point in the other direction. Virtually every ideology in Sunak’s brain is channeled toward ensuring the apparently corrupt financial sector that made him comes first. In his detached world, that is normal behavior. In my life, I have met two people from that multimillionaire world of finance. The only mark they left on me was a shocking lack of human empathy bordering on Darwinism.

How Starmer Responds

It will be interesting to see how Keir Starmer responds to this bombshell. He would have been planning for an election late in the year, not in five weeks. Does he continue with the “Don’t kick them when they are kicking themselves” strategy? Or does he show us something beyond “Sticking Plaster Politics” and “Getting Our Future Back” soundbites? Starmer is not daft, and his advisers will know he is one awkward bite of a bacon sandwich away from doing a Devon Loch.

Still, the Conservatives might seem royally screwed, but they can always hope. The Labour Party after all, are the masters of self-flagellation. If there were an Olympic event for loading a shotgun and blowing your feet off, the Labour Party would be regular visitors to the podium. Gordon Brown calling a woman a bigot while the microphone was still on was a work of art. She was a bigoted old bat, but it’s not what you do in a closely fought election. A shame, as Brown was fundamentally decent.

A Middle East Conundrum

What happens beyond our shores could derail Labour. The conflict (genocide) in the Middle East is not what they needed. Many Labour supporters (including myself) are disappointed in Labour’s tepid response to something so horrific. However, it has to be remembered (and this is important) that one false move regarding Israel, and you’re suddenly a Holocaust denier. Netanyahu and his mobsters have utilized their global power to enforce this rhetoric for decades, more or less unchallenged.

Being a bit of a lefty is not easy in a period of mainly right-wing populism. Comments on social media can lead to a bombardment of abuse. You can be accused of being a traitor, a snowflake, and a member of some sort of wokerati that hates their own country. I think my political beliefs are quite simple and not those of someone who hates their own country.

What Do We Believe Makes Us Better

I believe in equality of good education and health, a clean environment, a taxation system that is fair to all, and a system that allows anybody from any walk of life to flourish. We live in a country where the best education, health, and job opportunities are saved for the elite who want to keep it that way (why wouldn’t they?). They do that by throwing out crumbs we feel grateful for, spreading fear about people from foreign lands coming to get us and delusional tales about a golden past.

Those of us who have survived have done so by living off our wits and being blessed with a bit of luck and good health. Unless you are in the elite, you will have had a life where you are one fall off a scaffolding tower, or a debilitating illness, away from a horrible life in a crumbling council flat. The margins are that thin. If you have done well in life, it is in spite of the elite, not because of the opportunities they gave you. If you have survived and done as well as the elite, you should be in power, not them. They’ve never had to battle against the odds.

I think we can be better than what the Conservatives offer us, and I hope the Labour Party does as well. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.