2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address

• Sunak recently watered down his climate change mitigation policies, and refused to “speculate” on the future of rail project HS2.
• The Sunak government is seemingly unable to reverse a harmful narrative or maintain its own.
• But political leaders are successful when they present a grand narrative and find a way to connect themselves to it.
• Simply finding a bigger narrative is not enough – political leaders must be compelling characters within their narrative.

Contradictions in Sunak’s narrative

• The audience (in this case, the voting public) must feel able to personally connect with the narrative and the narrator.
• It is difficult to align yourself with a revival narrative, or an everyman narrative, from a position of privilege.
• It’s possible that Sunak’s wealth and privilege may render him singularly incapable of connecting to a bigger narrative at this moment in British history.

A narrative of decline

• As argued in an article in The Economist: “There is just one problem with this narrative.
• He may follow the example of Thatcher: when faced with a decline narrative, she chose not to reverse it but to embrace it – and blame it on her opponents.
• Whatever Sunak decides, reversing the narrative of an impending British collapse or leveraging decline to his advantage, his search for a grand narrative is already replete with incongruities.
• In the end, the stark realities outside Westminster may force him to acknowledge decline and his role within it.