by If Rishi Sunak could spare four hours to see 84-year-old Sir Ian McKellen play Falstaff in London’s West End, he would have a powerful reminder not only of the longevity of some careers but also how unequally the crown is shared. .
By many accounts, Sunak is struggling with the prospect of his short tenure wearing the Conservative crown coming to an end this autumn.
The result has been another rash of stories about Downing Street’s bad temper, including outbursts of Sunak’s glibness and spontaneity, sometimes reflected in interviews where he expresses his exasperation at his interviewer’s stupidity.
He would not be the first person to suffer the implication of office.
It was Roy Jenkins who once wisely observed that the first attribute of a successful prime minister is not a first-rate mind, but a first-rate mindset. Too many prime ministers have eaten themselves up, saying that the public can’t see how their own government is achieving what it set out to do. Sunak wants others to see his leadership as he believes he deserves it, which makes him weak, but not uncommon.
One of the major exceptions is James Callaghan, “Sunny Jim”, who, in the 1979 election campaign – fought in the shadow of the winter of discontent – expected the polls to end but he admitted to Bernard Donoughue in horror, his policy advisor, “maybe there was one of those sea changes in public opinion. If people have decided they want to change the government, there is nothing you can do.”
But such phlegmatism is rare, partly because of the way the job distances the PM from the electorate. Lord Tebbit, the great Thatcherite, recalls the door closing behind his hero as she enters Number 10 for the first time, and “immediately the windows which seem quite large from the outside begin to shrink, showing those inside less of the outside world as the famous red boxes grow around the prime minister”.
Tony Blair, when interviewed during Covid, admitted that the loss of self-awareness is one of the biggest risks associated with high office. For example, he said the Covid pandemic meant this was the first time in 30 years he had stayed in the same place: “The truth is the last time I drove a car was the day before the 1997 election. I thought I’ve always believed that being in power is a conspiracy to make you as extraordinary as possible because of the life you want.”
Blair’s two modest qualities as prime minister were the ability to appear normal to the outside world and, in his inner world, he had a knack for dividing issues. “He rarely brought one crisis to the next meeting,” says one of his aides.
And although he wanted the best coverage his government could have in the media, he had not been exhausted by the issue after three electoral victories.
In contrast, John Major admitted that, against all his instincts and plans, he was far too sensitive about what the press wrote. He told the Leveson inquiry: “God knows why I was, but I was. It’s a basic human emotion to get a little ratty about it. My overreaction was primarily a human overreaction.” Above all, he did not recognize himself in what he read.
Prime Ministers also often find that, once in office, they are less powerful than they imagined, pulling levers and pushing buttons without effect. For example, Sir Douglas Jay compared Clement Attlee to “a general commanding his troops across the landscape”, and “more to a cornered animal or a climber on a rock face that could not go up or down”.
What’s worse is that one defining event changes and cements public sentiment, making the occupant of No. 10 worse and more frustrating as they lurch from one strategy to another to reassess a community that seems to have closed its mind.
Major, in his second term, did not recover from the expulsion from the exchange rate mechanism in September 1992, and should have acted back on the letter of resignation he drafted. He would disagree with Tebbit’s description of the irreversible damage of the ERM episode: “For 30 years before Black Wednesday, Gallup’s monthly tracking poll asked respondents which party they thought was competent to run the economy managed. The Labor response was only once in those years. In the 12 years since Black Wednesday, the Conservatives have only responded once.”
But it left Major, like Sunak, increasingly angry with the “bastards” in his cabinet who he thought were pulling him down. One of his assistants recalls: “At the time you think that there are tricks to be achieved, or if someone did not behave in the party alone, and only later, after reflection, you realize that it was pointless . But that’s backwards. At the time, it was human instinct to think he could be saved or blame someone else.”
No one was better at blaming someone else, at least for her death, than Lady Thatcher. Diarist and MP Alan Clark remembers seeing her on the Elba equivalent soon after she left office. “Her perception is absolute; surpasses everything. [Norman] Lamont was scheming, [Chris] Patten plotted the whole thing. Kenneth Clarke led the chase from the cabinet room. [Malcolm] Rifkind was an easel. Even John Major is not cloud free.
“I remembered a remark that Tebbit once made to her in private: ‘Prime Minister you choose the cabinet.'”
Theresa May has had her own problems with her cabinet, particularly with the undisciplined Boris Johnson, and with the hard-line pro-Brexit press, but at least in the last two years with Gavin Barwell as chief of staff, Downing Street has dealt with them fairly . She also had the self-wisdom to recognize when the time was up.
The only real argument she had with Barwell was when she blamed herself for her resignation speech.
But if there is one prime minister in recent times that Sunak is most like, it is Gordon Brown. Both are reasonably intelligent, politically savvy and work all the hours God provides, plus overtime.
Of course Brown was visibly struggling with the demands of the office. Friends say he was harder on himself than anyone, and that he was born disorganized. Wardrobes in hotels were moved to cover marks on the wall caused by projectiles from office equipment being lobbed by the frustrated sergeant major.
In contrast, Sunak’s humor with the world seems lighthearted; low, faint whine against a brooding volcano. But Brown almost fought himself back in the government holed up in Downing Street for five days after the election looking for a coalition. For Sunak it seems there has been a sea change in opinion, and there is nothing he – or any Tory – can do to reverse it.
