This Writer once saw a TV documentary about the 1964 general election campaign in which Labour’s Harold Wilson, easily the most intelligent person ever to have high office in the UK, walked all over then-Conservative prime minister Alec Douglas Home.

The reason? Home simply wasn’t good in front of a camera and Wilson was. The Tory looked awkward, sounded stiff and presented himself as someone who simply didn’t want to be bothered with people.

It’s possible that my interpretation of his campaign is coloured by the biases of the filmmakers, of course, but given the result of the election I doubt it.

Rishi Sunak looks like he’s going to be worse.

To start with, he doesn’t seem even to understand that he needs to look into a TV camera – or at least face in the right direction – when he’s speaking to the public through it.

He fell at even that simple hurdle when he addressed the GB News People’s Forum on Monday, making his opening remarks with his back to the camera.

And from there it went downhill. There’s a Guardian review in the article below…

… but let’s go straight for the red meat (of Sunak’s jugular?) and watch Peter Stefanovic’s summary of everything that was wrong about Sunak’s TV time:

I’ve only got one full clip from the show – of when Sunak suggested his parents sent him to a private school because they had great aspirations for their children.

Labour’s Cat McKinnell called him out about it on ‘X’, although her words were clearly electioneering for her own party. Still, if you watch the clip, you can see what she means:

Here’s a more practical-minded response:

The verdicts afterward were damning. This one is kind in comparison with most:

The people invited to form the audience and ask the questions had all been chosen by the polling firm Survation which, it seems, had been asked to fill the room with Conservatives.

At least, they were Conservatives going in.

On the way out it was a different story, as we see here:

Only half of them came out saying they would still vote Tory.

Perhaps this is the most damning: a satirical poke at Sunak by suggesting his performance could become a segment on Would I Lie To You, with his part taken by legendary panellist Bob Mortimer:

We all thought Theresa May was shockingly bad, back in 2017.

Now we know we can look forward to a summer of seeing our prime minister running away, not only from his responsibilities but from TV cameras, the public and – most probably – the reality that he’s going to lose the election and probably his own place in Parliament.

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