"Happy St George's Day!" It was not the only time the prime minister had raised a symbolic piece of teaware. On the same day he appeared en route to Warsaw holding a white mug marked only with the number 10, presumably a reference to his current home address. Last year a mug featuring the union flag was his choice for a trip to a Nato summit in Lithuania.
On other occasions, Sunak has been photographed with a gamut of branded company crockery, from a Selco mug on a visit to a builders warehouse in London to a National Gas Transmission mug on a visit to the Bacton terminal.
So what is Sunak saying with all these mugs? Even on site visits it is a choice to leave in frame a hot drink receptacle rather than make sure it is out of shot.
"There is an imperative to signal he is somewhat normal," says the journalist and political mug collector Stephen Bush. The most recent addition to Bush's collection is the "In Liz we Truss" mug that was remaindered after the Tory party conference in 2022.
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