It is bleakly hilarious how much of Westminster has convinced itself that Rishi Sunak’s platform of soft scepticism towards net zero, £12bn of cuts to welfare, bringing back national service, etc. is closer to the “centre” than Johnson’s “no cuts, more police, 40 hospitals” shtick.
I think some of it is unwitting. It’s one of the most repeated pol science findings that people perceive ethnic minorities as more leftwing than they are, and it’s also why his supporters’ club talk of him as as a “moderate”, too.
(And there are some incredible assumptions and dangers in that. Competent must always = politically moderate is a centrist conceit which, well, could store up quite a lot of danger if, well, the extremes ever managed competence)
And it depends on how you define competence. When I worked on French politics I remember a journalist in the south of France telling me that the Front National was very good at prettifying tired civic spaces when they got elected at local level, and were very popular for it.
