From the diary of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most downwardly-spiralling prime minister
WE’RE losing the by-elections. We’ll lose the general election. So, if you look at it from a certain perspective, like Akshata’s, I could just quit now.
‘You’re already a loser,’ she says, ‘and everyone knows it. Even Bill Gates said I should be ashamed to be married to you. Why hang on a year just to be a bigger loser?
‘Let someone else take the job. Braverman, Badenoch, one of your nutcases. Make out you resigned on principle. That should boost the consultancy fees.
‘We don’t even have to say. Off we go to India on holiday and don’t come back. Email from the plane. Trust me. Nobody will even care.’
Obviously, on a surface level, these words are deeply insulting to me. And on a political level I was put in to do a job and I’m not a quitter. The Tories are bouncing back and turning this around. So all in all, I couldn’t disagree more.
Which doesn’t explain why I’m not saying any of that. Or why I have this rising feeling of hope and lightness in my chest, like all I have to do is say yes and all the tension would go away forever.
‘Actually,’ I say, burying that spark, ‘there’s every chance we’ll win at least one–’ before my wife cuts me off. ‘Oh hear yourself,’ she says. ‘“I am only a two-time loser! I am not fully humilated yet!”
‘After Johnson and Truss the history books will not even remember Sunak. First Indian prime minister of the former UK, that will be your footnote. Give it up. Go home.’
‘But inflation’s going down,’ I whimper pathetically. The door slams behind her, and rightly so.
