Rishi Sunak’s barmy Budget

He began with a touch of statesmanlike solemnity about the pandemic. ‘The British people may be worried but they are not daunted. We will protect this country and our people. We will rise to this challenge.’

This was Rishi Sunak delivering his first budget. Many viewers will not have seen him give a sustained performance before. He’s young, lean, smiley, mild-mannered. His thick rug of hair is worn with a schoolboy’s side-parting. Lots of teeth, oddly big ears. An ideal son-in-law type. But this isn’t the right look for a chancellor who should either resemble a mortician, (Stafford Cripps), or a voluptuary, (Nigel Lawson).

His vocal delivery has some strangely familiar quirks. The posh-boy voice is relaxed and super-confident. There’s a faint sibilance on the ‘s’s’. An unpredictable ‘z’ keeps popping into odd words – ‘the Conzertives are the party of public servizes’. There are hints of a London twang as well.