How the Tories lost their way

Do you pack up the flat or not? That’s the question that everyone who lives in Downing Street faces as an election approaches. In 1997 my job was to brief John Major each morning on the newspapers. We’d pick up the first editions from Charing Cross at midnight and young researchers would beaver away in the early hours working out how to respond. At 6 a.m. I’d then go to the flat above No. 10 and brief the bleary-eyed premier. I remember the chintzy sofas, the family photos and the awkward moments: ‘Prime Minister, your sister has told the Sun newspaper you can’t win.’ The day before polling, I crept into the flat and was confronted by stacks of boxes. The Majors had packed up. The Blairs didn’t with their elections; nor did the Camerons. I wonder what the Sunaks will do?

Was there any part of David that thought: ‘I’m back in the big boys’ club’ when he was photographed with Presidents Macron and Biden and Chancellor Scholz on Omaha Beach? He’s too professional to tell even his closest friends. D-Day did not happen in the distant past. I remember a dinner conversation I had with the former senator John Kerry. His mother owned a house in Brittany before the war; a few years after it ended, the family visited to see what was left of it. They drove through Normandy on their way there. Kerry remembered the beaches still strewn with the junk of war: burnt-out tanks, barbed wire and destroyed pillboxes. Maybe Rishi Sunak would have got away with skipping some of the ceremonies if he’d been way ahead in the polls; but way behind, and with the Tory party still angry about the early election, every error is pounced on and this was a huge, unforced one. Politics is a very lonely place when things are going wrong for you.