Rishi Sunak is the Tory version of Neo from The Matrix. The bullets have hit everyone but him

Enter Rishi Sunak, for another stint as the Tories’ very own Buster Keaton.

As the coronavirus house has collapsed on the government, Sunak has made it look like luck that he happens to be the guy standing in the gap beneath the open window, but it isn’t luck at all.

In fact, the very best politicians combine the ability of Neo from The Matrix for bullet swerving with the craft to make it all look like an effortless accident. It’s certainly not.

It is interesting to note that the extension of the furlough scheme until the end of October – but with some deliberately woven in ambiguity about employers having to shoulder a bit more of the cost – was announced in the House of Commons in the form of an urgent question.

Urgent questions are traditionally when government ministers are hauled to the dispatch box to account for some absurd mistake, like giving a £50m ferry contract to a company with no ferries.

And yet, here was Mr Sunak, meeting the opposition’s demands to give an update on the furlough scheme, before it entered the period in which it would turn into redundancies, and just breezily announcing it had been extended until October.

As he spoke, the details popped up on his personal Twitter feed in a pre-written thread, emblazoned with his personal logo and his own signature, before they were to be found anywhere else, like on the government website. The whole thing fully done, fully formed, released to silence the opposition before they’d been able to say a word.

Contrast this to, say, Boris Johnson, announcing changes to lockdown that no one understands, allowing the leak of a laughable slogan, telling people to go back to work on Monday then Wednesday, but not actually telling them how.

Good politicians make it even easier to see those who are, well, less good. Ten minutes before his announcement, Richard Burgon – remember him? – had heard rumours that the salary payment percentage was to be lowered from 80 per cent to 60 per cent, and was breathlessly calling it a disgrace.

An hour later, he’d been shown to be wrong, but it didn’t stop him dialling into the House of Commons to ask the question anyway. One of the intriguing aspects of the coronavirus is the long lag time between action and consequence. Something changes, but you don’t know if it’s worked for weeks. In this sense, the single-celled organism that is the Sars-CoV-2 strain of the coronavirus, and Burgon, are very similar indeed.

“We stand together,” announced Sunak, which in a way, we do, albeit 2m apart, in a garden centre, and with only one parent at a time.

At time of writing, there remains a slavering enthusiasm for the limitless expenditure of public cash on managing the epidemic, and why shouldn’t there be? Spending is fun, saving is boring. At the moment, the furlough scheme feels rather like a 50-person meal for which the bill’s going to be split.

If he’s having a starter, I’m having a starter. If she’s ordered a cocktail, I’m having a cocktail.

All great fun till the waiter turns up with the After Eights and a terrifying slip of paper.

For the time being, the public mood genuinely appears to be that nice Sunak is going to pick up the tab himself. Such things do not happen, of course, but for now, Rishi can do no wrong.

That he was and is an enthusiastic backer of Brexit, politely refusing, in 2016, to rally to David Cameron’s cause, also appears to have landed not a spot upon him, from the many, many people for whom such a thing is the original unforgivable sin.

It is also interesting to note that, after years of unimaginable self-inflicted mayhem, two Buster Keatons have come along at once. That Keir Starmer managed to spend almost five years serving Jeremy Corbyn, in a cabinet every other moderate voice in the Labour Party felt they had no choice but to walk out of, and yet now appears entirely politically unscathed by it, is a fairly stunning achievement.

Could it possibly be that Britain’s aberration years are working their way out of the system? Of course, there is the miserable present to contend with, for quite a while to come, but there is a faint chance that it may not last.

Source: UK Politics - www.independent.co.uk