Sunak on the sofa and Starmer in soft focus: prepare for a PR war pretending to be an election

This is the best summary I could come up with:

This is what we might call the “getting to know you” stage of the campaign, invariably made up of: introducing a spouse and, or, children to the public; rolling out a backstory to explain why you got into politics; and showing you are a real person with hobbies and interests, including insisting that you really do enjoy football, actually.

The Labour leader, beset by policy U-turns, creates an image of being inauthentic and lacking in values; meanwhile, the prime minister – alternately petulant and arrogant – somehow manages to appear uncomfortable talking to the public and the press.

Last week, the prime minister was pictured looking dynamic in front of a flipchart – an idea that was practically made for meme mockery (you increasingly get the impression Sunak’s comms team don’t actually like him).

Calls by Kwasi Kwarteng and the Mail on Sunday to bring out the “electoral force” known as Boris Johnson for the campaign may be unhinged, but they reflect the level of panic in the Tory camp.

The standout moment of his Piers Morgan interview – in which Sunak agreed to a £1,000 bet to deport refugees to Rwanda in time for the election – was notable not simply because it was offensively crass, but for just how easily the prime minister could be egged into morally bankrupt behaviour (and that he didn’t even have the political instinct to avoid it).

It is reminiscent of the clip leaked during his first leadership bid, in which he bragged to a group of Tory faithfuls that he’d taken money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to wealthier places.

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