How 'rank amateur' Rishi Sunak's downfall has been largely self-inflicted

There’s a skill to politics, some are naturals, others just never cut it and a stellar career in another profession doesn’t automatically translate. I recall a businessman lambasting me about the state of politics and how his skills would solve everything. Venturing into the fray he polled lamentably. His policies may have had merit, but he lacked the nous as well as the political machine.

Of course, successful bankers and businessmen can be excellent politicians, Michael Heseltine an entrepreneur and Alex Salmond an oil economist. But they had political talents and a political hinterland before moving across. But many don’t seek to do so, knowing that their skills are better employed where they are. Others try and fail as with that businessman.

And so it has proved with Rishi Sunak, who has shown himself to be a rank amateur in the political game. He may have been a success in the City of London but at politics he’s a total failure.

It's not 'events' that led to Rishi Sunak's troubles, but his lack of political ability (Picture: Justin Tallis/WPA pool/Getty Images)

His place in the history books is assured but they will recall him not as the saviour of the economy during Covid but as the hapless PM who led his party to catastrophic defeat. Past glories of bailing out business and providing for all will be exposed as simply what every Chancellor in the developed world was doing. It was neither new nor his idea, simply all that could be done to avoid total economic and social collapse.

Meanwhile, his personal contributions, from flirting with Partygate to “Eat out to help out”, displayed poor judgment or were over-hyped. The suave image projected in the leadership campaign of a safe pair of hands who knew about the economy and would reassure his own members and the wider electorate exposed as a mirage.

The reality has been political incompetence and total lack of tactical skills or ability to engage with or even understand ordinary people. I confess to being staggered at just how poor he’s been. Like many, I thought there was more political substance to the man. But no. He never grew into the office of PM and as a leader in an election he’s been an unmitigated disaster.

It’s hard to imagine other Tories, whether Mordaunt, Badenoch or Cleverly, being as poor. Doomed to defeat and the party fragmenting, he still failed to achieve any semblance of rallying most of his party and his actions have been equally inept.

All elections campaigns generate their own dynamic. “Events, dear boy” can overtake the best-laid plans. But with Sunak it’s not external events but self-inflicted harm that’s seeing his campaign implode. An early election catching his own folk off guard was insanity, then followed by calamity upon calamity. He might not have approved of political betting, but it was part of a culture. Ministers’ offices, like pets, reflect their master. It’s impossible to think it even being considered in Margaret Thatcher’s team.

Now he’s been exposed as a rich boy who’s indulged himself in politics rather than hanging around the Country Club. Inheriting wealth and finding a safe seat but with no grounding in political campaigning or engaging with ordinary people, he’s found himself totally out his depth. His wealth and self-entitlement drowned by his rank political amateurism.

Kenny MacAskill is the Alba party candidate for Alloa and Grangemouth