Britons may regret ditching a man as competent as Rishi

AS RISHI Sunak might reflecting this be A morning, there is no profession more brutal than politics.

- Ross Clark

In what other line of work are you forced to reapply for your job every five years - and take to the streets to beg for the right to keep it? The humiliation is greater still for a prime minister who loses an election.

The trappings of power will evaporate the moment Sunak departs the Palace after his audience with the King: the car, the flat above the shop, the officials who were on hand 24 hours a day - all gone. Some former PMs have even been reduced to begging friends for accommodation after their hurried departure from Downing Street.

As our wealthiest ever Prime Minister, Sunak need not worry about where he is going to live, but the fall will be all the greater given that he lost a seemingly impregnable 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson in 2019. Sunak looks like the man who drove a perfectly functioning vehicle off the road and sank into a swamp.

But that is hardly fair. At any other time, he could have been a popular PM. But he was dealt a more dreadful hand than any predecessor in modern times.