More popular than his party? Rishi rises up

After endless Tory turmoil, the PM and his team have been working on key issues and new Strategies to leave 'Truss-ageddon’ and Partygate behind

- Anne McElvoy

RISHI SUNAK sat down to dinner last night in the clubbable company of a hundred or so Tory peers — one of the set-piece events at which a prime minister gets to bask in the warm glow of approval from his own side. Tory peers, however, can be a disputatious bunch, because so many were appointed by departing premiers of differing ideological stripes. This time, however, Sunak was assured of a warm welcome and decent wine, which he does not touch as a teetotaller.

For the close-knit team Sunak assembled in haste on becoming Prime Minister in the chaos of last autumn’s “Truss-ageddon,” it feels like the “Rishi recipe” is starting to work — at least in establishing their man as the person with the “residency rights” at No10 until the next election (by the end of 2024), and setting a clearer tone in the direction of government. Noisy talk of challenges have faded to whimpers and even beneficiaries of the Boris era of domination see last week’s Partygate hearings as a moment their tousled hero started to feel like yesterday’s man.

Isaac Levido, the laconic Australian-born campaign strategist now regularly advising Sunak (as he did Johnson in 2019), briefed the Cabinet recently on the “narrow path to victory” the Tories can take — but only if they accept the brutal discipline of staying on message on agreed topics, and leave the in-fighting behind. Levido has a laidback delivery and with his neat beard and hoodie looks like a genteel hipster. He has a way, as one Cabinet member puts it, “of sounding deceptively mild until you realise he is actually saying something devastating”.