Sunak’s dire warning will fall on deaf ears

Even on the most optimistic reading, Rishi Sunak is drinking in the last-chance saloon. Today the Prime Minister is delivering a speech which is supposed to kick-start the general election campaign. Sunak wants to demonstrate that the Conservative party has the vision and policies to guide the country through a dangerous and uncertain future. But Sunak’s speech seems to be striking the wrong note: one of doom and gloom rather than optimism.

It’s no surprise that Sunak’s speech has been rapidly dismissed as a bungled relaunch. The PM’s thesis is that the next few years will see more change than the preceding few decades, and that we are in a dangerous era. The threats to global security from Russia and China, the challenge of mass migration and the dizzying pace of technological change are daunting elements of the world we are facing.