Fielding an audience of Sun readers should be home turf for a Conservative leader: flash your fiscal discipline, flaunt your Euroscepticism, and get your law and borders out. But it’s hard to imagine Rishi Sunak ever picking up a copy – he seems more of a Forbes or Harvard Business Review man. Working this crowd is symbolic of his broader challenge: how to charm Red Wall voters and hold the 2019 Conservative coalition together?
He was up against the Sun’s political editor Harry Cole, a genial host who manages to be burly and jaunty – a prop-forward with a cheeky grin and a sharp post-match suit. He had Sunak on the back foot from the off with the election betting scandal. Cole’s mixed metaphor of moral outrage would make any red-top editor proud: “It’s the last days of Rome; it’s people nicking the candlesticks on the way out.”
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