Rishi Sunak loved his time in the USA – but he needs to start scoring a few at home
RISHI SUNAK really loves America.
Back home the Prime Minister has looked a little tired and grayer lately, but standing side by side with Joe Biden at the White House this week he was in his element.
In just six months as PM, Sunak — who had a US green card until 2021 — has met with the 80-year-old US President an unprecedented five times.
And the old man and the newbie world leader, who is young enough to be his grandson, seem to have actually hit it off.
Biden told the British press pack that the so-called Special Relationship is “in really good shape”.
And he laid it on thick, saying he was “looking to Great Britain to help lead a way through” the new threats posed by Artificial Intelligence, adding: “There is no country we have greater faith in to help.”
Sunak, for his part, plays the role of an interested and dutiful apprentice, learning from the leader of the free world and laughing politely as he tells another one of his rambling anecdotes.
In the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Rishi sat rictus grin fixed as the President forgot his job title and the name of Britain’s most famous leader, Sir Winston Churchill.
At least he managed not to call him “Rashi Sanook” this time, even if Mr President did greet the PM as “Mr President”.
Things have not been so rosy between Washington and London in the past couple of years.
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Biden saw Boris Johnson as too close to Donald Trump and the pair were tetchy, and he jumped on Liz Truss’s tax cuts implosion as a useful warning tale to batter his Republican opponents.
But post-Brexit, this PM seems determined to reforge the Atlantic bond in a way not seen since David Cameron spent many years sucking up to Barack Obama.
It is a high-risk strategy though, with the increasingly frail President likely to be pitted against a resurgent Donald Trump next year.
Sunak may have pleased his Democrat pals by declaring himself “too busy” to meet the ex-President this week, but the Don has a long memory.
Just in case his love bombing at the White House was too subtle however, the PM even dressed up in a Washington Nationals baseball jacket as guest of honour at their game on Wednesday.
“You have no idea the trouble we had with that jacket,” admitted a pitch-side No10 official, who did not deny they had to get one from the junior size range to fit the PM’s slight build.
But the stadium was almost empty as the US and UK Marine bands played and a beaming Sunak waved and hugged a giant furry eagle mascot.
Sometimes in this job, travelling around the world with PMs, the metaphors are too easy. Was anyone really listening?
Back home, inflation remains almost as stubbornly high as Labour’s poll lead and the small boats keep on coming.
Train drivers and junior doctors are still out on strikes and Boris Johnson continues to make life very hard for his successor, even in his bombshell departure from the stage.
But the truth is by the time the PM landed back in Blighty on Friday morning, his US trip and new security and economy forged with Biden had already dropped off the headlines.
Behind the grins and pomp and circumstance, I can reveal the Prime Minister is deeply frustrated with how his Premiership - and his country - are being portrayed.
He actively bristled at suggestions from the travelling press that Britain as a “mid-sized” country should park global ambitions of leading in the AI sector.
“I completely disagree” he told reporters on his jet to DC, when they suggested Brexit Britain is at risk of being squeezed between giants the EU and the US.
And I understand he has privately voiced concerns about the relentless negativity of parts of the media in talking down Britain’s place in the world.
The PM can be short with journalists, but none more so than when he is on the world stage trying to sell UK PLC, but dogged by question about domestic woes.
It often takes premiers a good few years to get so fed-up - with Tony Blair once hammering the media as “feral beast tearing people and reputations to bits”.
It’s perhaps an insight into the size of the challenge that he faces - and the mess he inherited - that it’s taken Sunak only a year to voice his complaints.
What’s certain is that he’s going to need the hind of a rhino to win a brutal general election campaign next year.
Nearly all of our recent ex-PMs have seemed to prefer being abroad to the drudgery and endless scrutiny back home, that is nothing new.
Gordon Brown once boasted he had “saved the world”, and Cameron and Blair were particularly fond of their White House counterparts — although Theresa May seemed to find dealing with other world leaders as awkward as any other social encounter.
But the late Boris Johnson’s lesson should not be forgotten.
Last summer he was swanning about at the G7 and Nato taking glory for the UK’s early adopter role in arming Ukraine.
He looked at the peak of his powers. Less than a week after getting back to London he had been ousted as PM.
By Friday afternoon Sunak was at a different sports ground, addressing a conference of Northern Tories and business folk at Doncaster Racecourse.
Meanwhile, Labour was having to make a screeching U-turn over its ruinously expensive £28billion energy policy, and suspending another frontbencher over claims of misconduct.
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It is in the home arena against Sir Keir Starmer that the PM’s fate will be decided a year or so from now.
As Northern Tories told him, it is time to put the suitcase away - and start really swinging the domestic baseball bat.
