OPINION - Troubled Rishi Sunak is starting to look more desperate than masterly

This week’s return from the bank holiday splurge marks the beginning of the “serious season” at Westminster — the chance for Rishi Sunak to show that his revival plans are on course before MPs head off to recess and convince gloomy voters that his economic medicine will cure ills more effectively than his Labour rival.

The Government is in trouble partly because it has been around long enough to be blamed for everything, and partly because it has committed more unforced errors than a nervous unseeded player against a Wimbledon champ. It is floundering to deal with factors like inflation and labour shortages which are outside its immediate control.

Beyond a sunny and energetic exterior, Sunak is aware that events are not aiding his claim to create a steadier UK, recovering as fast as he hoped. That is producing some “Hail Mary passes”, the oddest being his attempt to persuade supermarkets to apply voluntary price caps on staple foods. For free market purists it’s an intervention too far. And aside from the ideological distaste on the Right, it is a bit un-Sunak.

A PM whose stock in trade is a sense of brisk efficiency and his knowledge of financial markets and competition would, I am pretty sure, have thought this is a terrible idea. One of the type which only political leaders failing to connect with cash-strapped voters or looking for a quick burst of applause for good intentions would make.

Yet this is the position in which he finds himself. The “price cap” (with its echoes of Seventies interventions) is slammed by retailers, who retort that they are already struggling on margins and holding down bills as far as they can. Soaring energy, transport and labour costs, as the retailers’ representatives point out, drive higher prices. Slash them in one place and supermarkets will raise them elsewhere to balance the books.

Underlying Sunak’s swerve into this territory is, however, raw data which makes his electoral journey look dicier: the stats are not in favour of a Rishi revival, or at least not fast enough.

Currently, the annual inflation rate for food and non-alcoholic drink lurks at 19 per cent. Shopping for a family gathering at the weekend, I was doubtless not the only Londoner to load up a trolley with treats and then have a “you what?” moment at the checkout when the damage was totted up.

And if prosperous city dwellers notice the pinch like this, the impact on the cash-strapped and poor is not just inconvenient but distressing — and unconducive to feeling much fondness for a Tory government.

Sunak’s pledge is to bring down inflation to half of its peak — so around five per cent by the end of the year.

But even “core” inflation (without volatile food and fuel included) is falling more slowly that the PM has hoped. That is in turn driving a rise in interest rates and hitting mortgage holders — a key interest group the Tories need to keep on board to win the argument.

This is not a backdrop against which governments can rally confidence. It also raises uncertainties among Conservatives about Sunak’s chosen strategy of delaying tax cuts until election year.

Yet Sunak, according to a predecessor who spent time with him recently, is “upbeat and definitely not depressed”. Notwithstanding the toll that a run of bad news can have on a PM, Sunak and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, according to their colleague, “still have something in the tank”. They are convinced by his strategy team’s belief that there is a narrow path to victory. And although it is not a subject Sunak would put on his bumper sticker, he is a meticulous follower of electoral arithmetic and knows that his party could lose 40 seats and still emerge with a majority, whereas Labour requires a great leap forward to attain the same outcome.

The sunny end of Sunak-ism would insist that the present woes are a drag on the Government’s recovery but not conclusive over a year away from polling day. Events can cut both ways and hit Labour’s plans too. Sunak has also thrived by being a “lucky general”, ready to serve when other parts of the Tory army fell away and opportunity opened up. The shopping basket and mortgage outgoings tell a more sombre tale. To get his footing back on that narrow path, Sunak needs a faster route out of the inflation trap — his future is written not in the stars but in the graphs.

Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico