Why does no one like Rishi?

Poor Rishi Sunak. Membership polls put him 30 point behind Liz Truss but there’s still three-and-a-half weeks to go in the Tory leadership race. The former Chancellor is being forced to spend his summer traipsing around the country, trapped in some hideous purgatory, waiting for the sweet release of 5 September to halt the seemingly endless number of hustings, debates, interviews and meetings.

But it seems the longtime heir apparent is having as much luck online as he is offline. Mr S has done some digging and Sunak has spent more than two-and-a-half times has much as Liz Truss on Facebook adverts, for all the good that it has done him. During the course of the campaign Sunak’s two pages have spent a combined total of £15,800 compared to Truss’s £6,000. One of those pages is his ‘Ready for Rishi’ campaign account, which has attracted a miserly 814 ‘likes’ despite having £5,700 spent on it. That’s the equivalent of paying £7 per person to ‘like’ his page. Hardly a smart investment for the former Treasury man…

Perhaps Sunak would be having better luck if, like Truss, he’d chosen to spend his funds on advertising on The Spectator instead.