What is Rishi Sunak’s real mission?

Sometimes it is no use looking for subliminal meanings, coded messages or the counterintuitive. Sometimes a politician can be so in-your-face that there’s no possible alternative explanation for what you see before you. So it is with the latest public information video from HM Treasury, presumably paid for with taxpayers’ hard-earned (or borrowed) money. It is nothing more or less than a Rishi Sunak propaganda film of such blatant intent that it would make Kim Jong-un think that the comms team were pushing things a bit. The clip, which runs for slightly over five excruciating minutes, contains a Kim-rivalling 134 images of Sunak. The only possible scenario missing from this North Korean-inspired production is a scene in a tractor factory or a pig farm where Little Rishi is earnestly and randomly pointing at stuff, and giving what they call in Pyongyang “on-the-spot guidance” to suitably awed generals and factory managers, making careful notes of the dear leader’s wisdom. Maybe next time, Jesse Norman and Steve Barclay can be roped in to give first-hand accounts of the work of the diminutive genius of No 11. “Budget 2021” is really quite a grandiloquent miniature picture show. Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t have done a better job; Robert Mugabe would have rejected it as a bit too self-centred; Donald Trump would blush but run with it.

This, let us not be in any doubt, is the latest escalation of the cult of Rishi, a long-term leadership campaign, and the most remarkable thing about it is that there is zero attempt to hide the fact. There are no other Tory figures in the film, and Boris Johnson, though briefly heard, is neither named nor seen. It is all about Sunak, including a toe-curling, buttock-clenchingly unwatchable moment when he describes how it felt to be offered the job of chancellor. No mention, obviously, of his predecessor, Sajid Javid, or indeed of Dominic Cummings, who forced Javid out when he got Johnson to try and take over the Treasury. In those days, only a little more than a year ago, Sunak was supposed to be installed as Cummings’s puppet. He seems to have outgrown that role, and the Treasury seems as powerful and independent as ever. The little puppet Rishi is turning into Sunak the puppeteer, such is his influence and prestige these days.

It seems now that Sunak’s sky-high ratings have gone to his head. In the most recent ConservativeHome poll of Tory members, Sunak had a net approval rating of 81.6 per cent. He was second only to Liz Truss, who had gone to the trouble of telling her willing audience that sexism and racism don’t really exist if you work hard. Johnson was on 55.1, a post-vaccine improvement on his previously dismal ratings. The two men have profile among the public at large.

Strange to say, though, Rishimania may have passed its peak. Spending some £200bn is bound to make you liked, but what goes up must eventually come down, and that goes for public borrowing and the popularity of politicians as much as anything. Sunak is much better off moving into the tough, “iron chancellor” role next, rather than the star-struck school-kid suddenly made head boy, as appears in the promotional video. He probably just about got away with the “eat out to help out” scheme, which he had to order Treasury officials to implement because they thought it a waste of money – and it turns out it “helped out” the second wave of Covid to get under way. He may not be so fortunate with future attempts to repair the public finances. It might help him get through the next few difficult years if he didn’t look quite so pleased with himself. As the Labour MP Toby Perkins put it on Twitter: “The phrase if he was an ice cream he’d lick himself could have been written for Sunak.” The generally derisive reaction on social media suggests that this propaganda is a vid too far. The Sunak leadership campaign should reimburse the taxpayer forthwith.