Rishi Sunak faces an impossible job

Well, good luck, Rishi. You’ll need it – and not just because, as backbench Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope put it this morning, the Conservative party has become ‘ungovernable’. The whole job of prime minister has become impossible. There are too many demands on the person who holds that position, and too much blame placed on them when people’s lives fail to live up to expectation.

Liz Truss made a huge error in announcing a huge £100 billion welfare programme (the energy price guarantee) in conjunction with £45 billion of tax cuts, all uncosted. But would her premiership have proved much more successful had she been a bit more careful with her fiscal policy? Hardly. Had she been less generous with her energy price guarantee, she would have been accused of letting people freeze to death, or starve. Had she held back on tax cuts she would have been damned for that, too.