It is the ceremonial opening of the culture war games. Rishi Sunak, late to start but making up ground, showed up in earnest at the end of July with what has become the first ritual, the kicking of the asylum seeker. Liz Truss pledged to send even more of them abroad. Sunak, unable to outdo Truss by pledging to fire them into outer space, said hear me out: cruise ships. How about we house asylum seekers in a sort of floating prison while they are processed?
This didn’t do the trick, and so Sunak effectively relaunched his campaign last week, pivoting towards a fight with “leftwing agitators” for trying to “take a bulldozer to our history, our traditions and our fundamental values”. He accused them of “rewriting the English language so we can’t even use words like ‘man’, ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ without being told we’re offending someone”. Then scrambling for more, announced that “vilifying the UK” should be an offence that should be referred to Prevent, as it amounts to extremism.
It’s worth noting here that Sunak started out as the “commonsense” candidate, who was going to be “honest” and not depend on “fairytales”. But then, presumably after actually getting to know the voting Tory membership, then having a Downfall-style meltdown at his team, decided that fewer facts and more empty posturing was the way to go. It is an embarrassingly desperate submission from someone who once insisted he had “zero interest in fighting a…
