Rishi Sunak as PM

[emmahazel]

It's more likely now that Sunak will become our next PM as he has more MPs backing him. Penny is finished in my opinion with her trans comments.

Sunak's promised not to cut tax so this means higher living costs to continue.
Do you think he'll be a good leader?

Did he do the right thing, tell them to stop and report them to the police, or did he join in?

I want Hunt.

Did you know @ArcticRoll2 Keir had a beer in the north?

People who are really struggling will starve if sunak becomes PM. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. Yeah a typical PM but he's been digging this country it's grave since he's got involved.

This is all I have say on the matter.

I think he’ll be ok. Certainly hard working from what I can see and commands respect. His Achilles heel is his wealth but on the flip side he is incorruptible ( doesn’t need the cash) and won’t be begging people to pay for his wall paper for example. I doubt he is a womaniser or a partier. I think he is vulnerable to being pushed around by power players e.g tech type people/ Silicon Valley types but I think all politicians get their head turned that way, Hate to say it but I also think he is too short! I know that doesn’t matter and it doesn’t to me but the media could have fun with that.
But he has risen to chancellor so hopefully I am wrong about that!

As a floating voter I would be tempted back to the Tory party by Tom Tugendhat.

Rishi would not be a disastrous choice - the next election will be all a GB version of “It’s the economy, stupid” and a PM who is an economist and has a proper understanding of geopolitics will at least have a head start. I am not dubious about his wealth - he may have married well, but as the son of a GP and a pharmacist he probably knows more about wealth inequality than most of the mandarin class, and (eyebrow-raising this, I know) he was probably one of the poorer kids at Winchester so presumably understands the politics of envy which is British lifeblood.

Neither Penny nor Liz have what it takes, intellectually or even in terms of electoral appeal, but they may appeal to Tory women.

@Meklk

To be honest I am not sure their background does essentially matter.

However I think any pm should perhaps have to live on benefits on a deprived estate and teach as a ta in school and work in NHS as a carer.

I think perhaps this gauntlet should be part of any leader contest no matter what party or background anyway.

It would certainly cut the chaff from the wood

We don’t have to have lived something ourselves to be able to understand it, and there are so many diverse challenges that people face that it’s just not practical to think that a PM should have personal experience of each.

Other examples than poverty include

Disability
SEN
sexuality
sex
language barriers
childhood abuse

and so on.

Agree with this- look at Martin Lewis. He's worth about £100m but understands poverty and how government policy affects it better than anyone I can think of. It's about the individual, not how rich they are.

Shame we can't have Martin Lewis as PM!

They probably both are OK to work a sixty hour week.

120 hours on £9.50 is £60,000 per year.

Rishi rich has no idea as to the struggles of normal people
He sneers at the working class
He was the bloody chancellor until last week hes been as incompetent as anyone else around the economy
He also has no integrity in regards to his role in BJ government you cant be complicit in this governments incompetence then suggest youre somehow different because you bailed at a time which was opportunistic for you

Itll be the same old shit just with a different head

Penny is finished in my opinion with her trans comments. She isn't finished at all. Her odds at the bookies' keep getting better and better. Yes, she blatantly, openly lied and doubled down on several topics, but she has been doing this for years and it has no consequences. The British public love a confident liar; Johnson was a known and celebrated liar when he got his huge majority in 2019.

Do you think someone worth £730m who uses dual nationality to dodge tax as someone who has your best interest at heart? What other citizenship does Sunak have besides UK?

Truss, just christ almighty. What's the supposed issue with Truss (versus the other candidates, I mean, not vs an ideal Conservative leader, or ideal PM)? There seems to be a trend to simply say her name and sneer but no one ever has any reason except something vague about cheese.

Liz Truss read PPE according to Wikipedia, but she has a very unimpressive prior work history and her willingness to change from Lib Dem to Conservatives makes me wonder about her political opportunism. I have never been impressed by anything she has ever said or done as an MP and like most Tory women ministers she has a nasty school girl bully vibe, although not as nasty as Penny Mordaunt who is a a liar and moron and Kemi Badenoch who is plain vile and positively dangerous to the minorities nobody has given her a mandate to represent.

Didn't Javid resign as Chancellor because Boris wanted him to sack his advisers and replace them with approved ones, and he wouldn't do it and so resigned, but Sunak then became Chancellor so apparently he's happy to work under that situation?

I never heard of charter cities before, they sound really bad.
www.thenational.scot/politics/20267661.rishi-sunaks-beloved-charter-cities-pose-huge-threat-democracy/

No and I have no trust in him whatsoever

I’m not voting Conservative any time soon and I defo wouldn’t vote for Sunak. He and his wife dodged massive amounts of tax whilst shafting the rest of us.

Do we really want someone like him running the country?

I genuinely wonder why he works.

He could sit on boards of charities and do volunteer work at a high level.

@Meklk Seems a bit extreme! I imagine many if not most of us here on Mumsnet have relatively middle class existences, and are earning (whether individually or combined with a partner) considerably more than minimum wage. Should we also all try to survive on minimum wage for a month, just because? Surely there are more fruitful ways of giving back and helping others?

Sunak is a billionaire, yes, incredibly rich, and doesn't need to work a day in his life, and he'll remain incredibly rich, as will his children and grandchildren. That kind of wealth is hard to even fathom for most of us. But he's standing to be Prime Minister, which nobody can deny is a difficult, stressful and incredibly full-on job. You don't need to have been poor or lived in poverty to emotionally and intellectually comprehend its reality and its impact. That's what empathy is.

Politicians generally aren't "poor" and tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds. Personally, I'm much more interested in Sunak's plan for the economy, general competence, intellect and conviction than how wealthy he his wife is. By no means a solid fan, but he's the best out of the two.

Why would someone as wealthy as Sunak want to take on a job that pays pocket money to him?

That's right, because when in power these people can manipulate everything to suit their own agenda. Billion pound contracts to friends etc. It's a disgrace.

Sunak is only marginally better to Truss as she seems not only dim but dangerously incompetent.

Why would someone as wealthy as Sunak want to take on a job that pays pocket money to him?

And you could say exactly the same about Johnson. He earned more from his Telegraph column than his PM's salary.

It's about power. Maybe Sunak things he can make things better?

I don't think Rishi Sunak will be a good leader, but much better than Liz Truss, and most likely with a cabinet of more able (or less incapable) people.

Gavin Williamson apparently could return under a Liz Truss government, which says it all.

I'd rather Sunak than Truss, but I suspect Truss will take it as she's rebranded herself as an ardent Brexiteer and is promising unicorns.

I like unicorns.

Will they be male or female unicorns?