When the Prime Minister cannot be bothered to listen to the Budget it sends out a pretty big signal to the country that there’s nothing much in it. Rishi Sunak spent long chunks of Jeremy Hunt’s latest financial statement on Wednesday chatting away to Treasury Chief Secretary Laura Trott. It was a wholesome scene reminiscent of one of those joint social evenings that neighbouring boys’ and girls’ schools in pleasant Home Counties towns sometimes put on for their sixth-formers. Compared to listening to Hunt, it must have been a gas.
Sunak’s semi-disengaged demeanour was emblematic of the Conservative benches in what was supposed to have been a key week in the great Tory fightback that clearly isn’t going to happen. Instead, Theresa May has just announced she is standing down as a Tory MP. And Sajid Javid, the first of the five chancellors of this parliamentary term, has declared that the prospect of waking up to Keir Starmer as prime minister simply isn’t frightening.
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