Stephen Bush: Today’s newsletter: some thoughts on Rishi Sunak’s election campaign, and the decisions, in the last six weeks, but also the last two years that made it so:

Today’s newsletter: some thoughts on Rishi Sunak’s election campaign, and the decisions, in the last six weeks, but also the last two years that made it so:

Why has Rishi Sunak’s campaign been such a disaster?www.ft.com The PM’s blunders worsened his chances amid a backdrop of crumbling public services and party fundraising struggles

Hard to run on your record when this is your record. Hard to say your opponent has no plan when you don't either.

Indeed. It’s essentially a campaign with no self-awareness, run by people who would vote for the Tory candidate even had they murdered their own family.

the only people left in the conservative party are either very old or very odd, and there weren't many old people on the campaign

Yeah - if I still had to do the hospital pass of 'write a column for people who will pick up the magazine on Thursday all the way through Tuesday' I would have basically done 'the biggest threat the Tory party faces is workplace ageism' for this reason.

Every day I get a cogent, clearly expressed email from Conservatives. Unfortunately these emails are from FT readers in their 50s and 60s who are still working, and could and should be getting selected and seconded ala Gillian Keegan, while the official Tory material I get is mental.

I (54) was on a Strategic Advisory Board call for a financial sector firm this morning. Everyone on the call was a current or retired *senior* banking or IM executive. Natural Conservative territory? Everyone was *rejoicing* at potential Tory extinction.

This is such, such a bad problem in quite a lot of British institutions now I think about it. (Particularly vile when combined with any other form of bigotry. Notoriously awful for competent women in their sixties, for instance).

I think there is a professional and possibly even electable Conservative Party that exists in potentia. No idea how you get there from here.

But why would those sensible 50-60 year olds want to get into politics? Why would anyone in their right mind want to do such a thing right now? Locally, nationally, it just seems like a way to poison your soul by one means or another.

I've met literally two types of Tory roughly my age - army officers in rural areas who have been increasingly disgusted by the direction of the party and a guy who I once literally had to threaten to throw out of my house due to his obnoxiousness.

Be fair, some of them would vote for the Tory candidate BECAUSE they had murdered their own family 👍

Radical thinking on inheritance tax planning.

No attempt to persuade, just louder and louder repetition of "vote for us because vote for us"

I wonder if there will be more self awareness in a goodbye speech to the public? Or if we’ll get more of the same?

I think our options are triumphal, betrayed, or both.

Oh dear… I wasn’t even hoping for an apology but something basically dignified and gracious would be nice.

by, and for, as far as I can tell.

If the “some thoughts” don’t begin “what the fuck WAS that”, you are a more disciplined writer and thinker than most could ever dream of being

You make a good point about simply not using any of the deteriorating services the rest of us have to deal with.

Thanks. What I find funny about it is he and his inner circle love to talk about how things work “in business”, well, I don’t know of a single business where the top team is as detached from what happens on the shop floor as Rishi is from the services *he runs*!

watching my kids’ end of term concert the other week, the phrase “he wants to be conductor but can’t be bothered to learn an instrument” popped into my head, and immediately it fitted for Sunak. No willingness to learn any ropes, just a determination that he should be in charge.

I keep thinking about the interviews where he keeps trying to make schools a dividing line: visibly has no grip of the cross-party history of that policy, just an unthinking “Tories good, Labour bad” view of how policy “must” work.

Not the first Tory PM to fit that mold, either.

I really think that the Tories detachment from actually existing business is a huge part of their problem. Big ticket items like Brexit, obvs, but also on so many culture issues - flexible working, bullying - try consistently sound deranged to anybody with experience of a modern workplace.

Like, I think if I was a CEO, naturally inclined to vote Tory, and I heard them attacking Starmer for blocking out *one night a week* for family time, I think my response would just be "these people are fucking clowns"

All of the Tories' business stuff since Brexit has been LARPing. None of them would know an actual business decision if it smacked them in the face.

Oh god, 100% this. Whenever I hear any Tory MP talking about business, all I can hear is the Fry And Laurie sketches about business. I just need someone to shout “Dammit, Marjory!” and the illusion will be complete… youtu.be/nHuR5eslKhQ?...

Fry Laurie --- MARGORYyoutu.be Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie - boardroom shenanigans.

A lot of it is like the rest of their politics, stuck in a past that sort-of existed when their voters were 20-somethings (but even then wasn't universal).

Lots of people who talk about “business” are straight up fantasists. It’s a sort of code.

"Fuck Business" summed it all up nicely

Close all MBA courses

It seems fairly common in the tech industry, I would say? Which is also, these days, an industry built on bullshit.

you can distrupt from anywhere, if anything the more informed you are the less disruptive your ideas and leadership will be

Heard a story that when Maude ran the cabinet office he tried to get every minister to do an Agile training course so they understood how tech sector projects worked. It didn't happen. Some of his channel shift etc work with GDS was flawed but he was at least interested in how things could be done.

Actually, it's going to be interesting to see how many Tory ex-MPs end up in tech. I feel like it's going to be quite a few.

Investment banks

No, I think, as with “tech”, there can be a misalignment about what people feel the shop floor is or should he and what the executives perceive it to be (Google being the ur example: everyone bar Google thinks it is a discovery engine, they think it’s about selling you).

*cough* The Post Office *cough*

Absolutely not (having worked at a couple).

100% part of the problem - hell, even a First Class train ride, instead of a helicopter trip, would have done *something* for his public image I think. Didn't he ask someone at a soup kitchen if they'd thought about 'getting into business'?

"do you work in finance" I think is what he asked.

www.theguardian.com/society/2022... "The prime minister asked the man whether he worked in business. The man replied that he was homeless. Sunak asked if finance was something he would like to get in to. The man replied: “I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t know, I’d like to get through Christmas first.”"

‘Do you work in business?’ Sunak mocked for ‘excruciating’ exchange with homeless manwww.theguardian.com PM filmed asking man if he would like to ‘get in to’ financial services during visit to London shelter

Quote lightly edited to get under the character limit

"Some thoughts," would appear to be rather more than they gave it themselves.

On the one hand, the Tories have run a disastrous campaign. On the other hand, making the central message about Sunak's inability to find his way out of a paper bag was probably better than making the election about the state of public services.