Rishi Sunak's week from hell has one painful root cause

THE first time I heard Rishi Sunak's name was from William Hague, in Pushkar's Indian restaurant in Birmingham.

- Tom Newton Dunn

It was almost ten years ago, at a dinner for the outgoing Foreign Secretary that some of us had thrown for him during the Tory party conference.

Hague, who was stepping down, was purring in delight about his newly-selected successor in his North Yorkshire seat of Richmond.

"Hugely impressive young man", and "a very bright future in the party" were two phrases he used about Sunak, a total political unknown at the time.

Hague was right. Less than six years after that dinner, Sunak was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two years later from that, he became Britain's first Asian-heritage PM, at the age of just 42.

Even then, he was still being called "Dishy Rishi" and was widely assumed to be his creaking party's sensible salvation.

This week, just 20 months on, he notched up a personal approval rating of minus 54, the second worst for a Tory leader ever (after Liz Truss's minus 70).

Sunak was branded "an absolute dud" by defecting former Tory donor John Caudwell. And in 13 days time, rafts of shuddering polls predicted he will oversee the worst Conservative general election defeat since 1906.