Can Rishi Sunak get Britain to like him again?

When Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to announce a general election on 4 July, he made a speech which was unusually personal. Looking back on his steep rise to power – five years ago he was not even a cabinet minister – he spoke of the challenges the country has faced and how they have affected him. Seeing how people responded to the pandemic, he said: ‘I have never been prouder to be British’.

The Prime Minister knows moments like this are a weak point for him. He comes across as a colourless technocrat, a man at home with spreadsheets and account balances but insulated by privilege: he was educated at Winchester, Oxford and Stanford, earned substantial amounts of money in investment management and married the daughter of a billionaire. Fairly or not, many voters think he simply doesn’t understand the issues that affect our everyday lives or the stresses and hardships that people face in a volatile economy and with public services which are under strain.