Rishi Sunak interview: The passion is there, but it has come too late

Sitting down with The Yorkshire Post in the Conservatives’ Leeds office, the Prime Minister has fire in his eyes talking about the man who will almost certainly replace him in Downing Street.

“Keir Starmer is someone who has changed his mind on every single position that he has taken. He's not straight with you about what he wants to do,” he says, in a tone that leaves no question in how much he dislikes the Labour leader.

“That's not leadership. That's not what our country needs. That's the choice for people at this election.”

It’s a fairly compelling pitch that makes you think “where has this Rishi been all campaign?”

There’s some fight here, but with less than a week to go until polling day, it is all a bit late.

This is the Prime Minister’s second interview with his local paper since taking the top job, three months on from his first in a Wetherspoons in Maltby, South Yorkshire.

In March, a relaxed, calm Rishi Sunak spoke about the economy turning a corner and sticking to the plan.

In May, panic erupted within his party as gambled and decided that it was time to call an election earlier than the expected date in the autumn.

Since then the Conservatives have fought a very poor campaign, even by the standards of Theresa May’s disastrous 2017 outing.

The messaging and vision has been muddled, the campaign has been gaffe-prone, and the decision-making at the heart of it all has often been bewildering.

When asked how he thinks the campaign has gone, the only answer that Mr Sunak can muster is “well, I'm energised and I'm up for the fight”, as if in the final week of the campaign it’s just a case of getting to the finish line.

Similarly he does not answer whether he has any regrets about going early.

Election campaigns are tortuous, and Mr Sunak, with clear relish, says that he will have a night in his own bed tonight.

His time as Prime Minister has taken its toll somewhat, with the election magnifying that, perhaps at no point more so than following the decision taken to leave D-Day celebrations early.

Insiders said that he looked utterly broken by the backlash, and despite his apology, it is another reason fresh in voters' minds to keep them from voting for his party next week.

It speaks to the heart of what current and former party and government insiders have said repeatedly: his team is not up to scratch if nobody was able to convince him that leaving D-Day to do an ITV interview was, at best, a bad look, at worse, electoral suicide.

“It was a mistake, and that's why I apologised straight away, and I hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me, and particularly veterans locally in my community,” he says.

Mr Sunak likes his team and is loyal to them, shown by distinct lack of sackings during his time in Downing Street, despite the lack of progress in the polls, compared to the Boris Johnson era.

But he has been let down by them, most recently by Craig Williams, one of his key allies throughout his time at the top of British politics, after it emerged that he had bet on the date of the election before it was announced.

It took Mr Sunak two weeks to withdraw his support for him, and became visibly frustrated with Sky’s Sam Coates when asked whether he personally told Mr Williams about the election date.

When asked about the supposed £8,000 bet made by Yorkshire Tory MP Philip Davies that he would lose his Shipley seat, Mr Sunak does not pass any judgement.

“Taking a step back,” he says, before repeating the same line that the party has been using for days to address the allegations, Mr Sunak’s position is simply that it is for the Gambling Commission to investigate if rules are broken, and if they were, then they’re “booted” out of the party.

He has no answer whether it’s morally right for MPs to be doing this.

Despite a rigid message discipline in the final weeks of the campaign, seen in how the vast majority of this interview involved lines repeated from either the previous night’s debate, at the speech he gave following our interview, or the age-old “as I’ve said previously”, the final message to voters is distinctly muddled.

Given that the press, members of his cabinet, and most importantly the voters, seem to have already made up their mind that Labour will be the next government, there is now a very odd vibe to the final week before polling day.

In the same breath, the Prime Minister tells me that he is “fighting to win this election” but that voters shouldn’t give “Labour a blank cheque”.

The message to voters, as I see it, sounds remarkably like: “No, please don't. Not like this.”

The election will go badly for the Conservatives next week, and the party has shifted into what would politely be described as “damage limitation mode” in giving resources to the seats that give Sir Keir Starmer the dreaded supermajority that Tory MPs feel will give their constituents pause for thought.

In 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won 26 seats in Yorkshire compared to Labour’s 28, and won the popular vote across the region.

Of the 12 MRP poll projections for Tory seats in Yorkshire at this election, they are predicted to retain anywhere between 9 and 0.

Two of these polls put Labour ahead in Rishi Sunak’s own seat of Richmond and Northallerton, which would see him become the first Prime Minister in history to lose his seat at a general election.

In the past three days Mr Sunak has travelled back home to campaign in his seat, and the media has been informed that his wife has done so as well. David Cameron has become only the second cabinet minister to make a media trip to Yorkshire in the entire campaign. His team has also said that they would be interested in the Prime Minister attending a hustings in his seat.

Though the possibility of losing there is remote, all signs suggest it has at least spooked the Prime Minister.

“Look, I never take anything for granted, and I work as hard as I can for my constituents,” says Mr Sunak on the possibility of him losing in Richmond and Northallerton next week.

Win or not, there is a persistent rumour that Mr Sunak has not been able to quell despite repeated denials: that after losing the election he will up sticks and move to California.

“Obviously I'm going to stay as an MP,” he says, adding: “It's been the most rewarding thing that I've ever done in my life is be their Member of Parliament.”

Despite the media obsession of the Prime Minister downing tools and scarpering off to lick his wounds like David Cameron, there are reasons to stay.

His wife Akshata Murty is said to love the area, and upon her husband losing the top job, there’s no reason to suggest she would want to leave it, and to uproot the family and move away.

It will be a decision for them both when the dust settles following polling day on what is set to be a bad night.

Mr Sunak is chipper as we leave the conference room in CCHQ Leeds and is as personable and likeable as it is often reported.

I’m informed that I am the first journalist to have been allowed into their office which was announced in 2020.

“This new headquarters will provide the party with a base at the heart of the blue wall because we’re in it for the long haul,” said the party’s chairman at the time.

It was meant to signify the arrival of the party in Yorkshire, and a statement of its ambition to move beyond the more than 20 seats it won under Boris Johnson.

Now, it is merely a stop-off for the Prime Minister heading home to attempt to retain his own seat in what could be the only remaining Conservative seat in the region.