Exclusive interview: Rishi Sunak reveals why he keeps going despite disastrous polls

First came Prince Charles, who was presented with a hamper of cheese by children from the local primary school.

Two months later, the environment secretary Liz Truss paid a visit, and told the MP in Parliament that after her visit she’d been eating “Yorkshire yoghurt ever since”.

Rishi Sunak met the now-King Charles again last year, as he became the country’s newest Prime Minister, taking over from the disastrous premiership of his predecessor, Ms Truss.

“I’ve still got that column pinned up in my office,” says Rishi Sunak, as he sits down with his local paper in a South Yorkshire Wetherspoons, facing the most daunting political battle of his life.

“It’s not been easy, for sure,” he says. “When I got the job, someone described it to me as the worst hospital pass for an incoming Prime Minister in several decades”.

He’s right, and he would be rightly annoyed with the lot he has inherited.

As this paper noted when he was selected with William Hague’s seat of Richmond in 2014, there were many that hoped that he would go on to occupy one of the great offices of state.

Little did they know that he would occupy two, and that the time he held them would be so rocky.

As Boris Johnson’s Chancellor he saw the long-lasting physical, psychological and financial damage that pandemic inflicted upon the UK.

In the twilight of his predecessor’s premiership, he also saw the country’s finances once again decimated by the war in Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis with the inflationary effects that we are feeling to this day.

Following his unsuccessful bid to succeed Mr Johnson in Downing Street, a defeated Rishi Sunak was forced to watch from the sidelines as the economic plans of Liz Truss took a third hammerblow to the nation’s finances, as he warned her “fairytale” economic plans would.

A succession of cataclysmic events beyond Tory control, along with a series of moral and economic blunders very much of their own making, has now left his party with a record low polling of around 20 per cent.

Once described as “Teflon Rishi”, a Tory Chancellor able to remain popular while raising taxes, his personal pollings have taken a tumble now he is at the helm, with 52 per cent of the public disliking him.

This is about as bad as things get, and he would rightly be annoyed.

“It just comes with the territory,” he says, when asked if he takes the public’s view of him personally.

“You have to have a thick skin, I don’t know anyone who would enter politics without a thick skin.”

Voters mocked Ed Miliband, whose seat is only 5 miles away from where we are sat, for being “tough enough”, but this is a test that Mr Sunak needs to be passing, or at least not showing the stresses of the job.

“I get that people are frustrated about the last few years [...] and if people want to express some of that frustration at me, then that’s entirely unsurprising,” he says.

Last year this resentment towards the Government, and by default, Mr Sunak, spilled over into something far more personal, and for most people quite terrifying.

In August, Mr Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty returned to California with their two children, flying back to the state where they first met while he was studying for an MBA at Stanford University before his career in the world of money, and where many speculate he may return if the election is lost.

“Probably like everybody, family is the most important thing to me,” he says.

“I’m really blessed, I have an amazing wife and two young girls who, thankfully, are young enough that they’re not particularly bothered or that interested in what I’m doing.

“They’re a welcome distraction in the rare times that I’m home and with them.

“We also have our dog Nova, who's now been with us for two years. I can't imagine life before she arrived.

“Like all parents, it’s not always rosy and things are tricky, but that is what gives me a lot of support and provides the distraction away from work, it’s really lovely.”

At the same time as their California trip which saw them smiling and walking down Santa Monica Pier where they own a £5 million penthouse, their family home back in Richmond had been scaled by Greenpeace protesters, in what was for many a shocking breach of security for the UK’s leader.

“That was a surprising incident when it happened,” he tells me when asked if he was scared, angry, or even annoyed at the invasion of his family home.

“I’m very lucky, right, I’m looked after by an incredible team of people who do a great job keeping me safe, but it’s not just me, you’ve had many more MPs in recent weeks and months who have not felt safe, either in their homes or out and about doing their events.

“That’s not right. Our values in this country are ones of tolerance and decency and respect.”

Rishi Sunak doesn’t give much away in terms of emotion. Apart from an occasional so-called “tetchy” response to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer across the despatch box, his mantra is one of sunshine positivity.

That, he says, is again down to his family and his upbringing, and can rely on any number of relatives and advisors for help.

Unlike Prince Harry, and any number of more enlightened people who enjoy the warmer and free-spirited climbs of California, Mr Sunak doesn’t use therapy or a life coach, he says, as his family and team are enough to keep him going.

“No,” he laughs, “I mean I’m very blessed with my family, my extended family, large Indian family, so I’ve got lots of people with support and advice at all times.

“I’ve got an amazing team around me, I’ve been very fortunate with the people that I work with, many of whom have been with me for many years.

“In my everyday life I get to go to work every day, admittedly with a very short commute from the flat down the steps and get to work with people who are incredible and support me through it and work really hard with me, and that makes everything a bit easier.”

What keeps Rishi Sunak on track is the belief that he is doing the right thing, which you may be able to tell from the unsubtle repetition of “stick to the plan” that you will hear in most addresses he makes.

The decision to run as an MP, despite having enough money to live hundreds of lifetimes with his wife in comfortable anonymity, is the same motivation that keeps him sticking to his guns in the face of disastrous polling.

“It’s difficult at times but ultimately I’m driven by a sense of just wanting to make people’s lives better, and I get that from my parents,” he says.

“My dad was a GP, my mum was a pharmacist, and I grew up working for my mum for years.

“I saw the difference that both of them made in our local community where we grew up, and how they, as individuals, could make a difference in people’s lives.

“I thought that was wonderful and inspiring and was one of the reasons I wanted to become a Member of Parliament.

“That’s what I do every day now, on a slightly bigger scale, obviously.

“I have an inner belief and confidence that we are doing the right thing.

“At the end of every day, if I’m working as hard as I can, and doing what I believe is right and making a difference to people then that gives you enough encouragement to keep going,” he says.

Whether you want to put it down to a rigorous childhood work-ethic, or a self-confidence instilled from being head boy at Winchester College, followed by being a well-paid investment banker and well-paid hedge fund manager who is married to the daughter of a multi-billionaire, there is no denying that he believes he is doing the right thing.

Listing his achievements, he points to last year’s fall in illegal migration, a drop in NHS waiting lists, and an economy in “much better shape” than when he inherited it, meaning he can deliver the “meaningful” tax cuts announced the previous day.

“Inflation, more than halved from 11 per cent to 4 per cent, energy bills, mortgage rates, now falling, wages have been rising faster than prices - those are real things.

“I know that people out and about, they can sense that things have turned. I detect that among people.

“You don’t deliver a change without having a plan and sticking to it. We have a plan. It’s working. Stick with it, and people can have peace of mind that the future will continue to improve.”

It will be several weeks before we know if the Prime Minister is right.

Signs tentatively point towards a few more months until Rishi Sunak can put his theory to the country, as the mantra of “stick to the plan” will take a bit longer to sink in as the public begins to slowly feel the effects of lower inflation, lower interest rates, higher wages and lower taxes.

While many voters have made up their minds about the Conservatives, the public have become far more unpredictable than ever, from voting for the Brexit that they weren’t supposed to, to getting the North to vote in an old Etonian called Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Whether it’s his 10 pledges for dairy farmers, or 5 priorities for the UK, Rishi Sunak has never faced the full unpredictability of the British public.

From selection as a candidate, to winning a safe seat, to joining a select committee, to becoming minister and finally to becoming leader of his party and the country, he has been elevated without the nation taking a judgement on him.

A decade ago, this newspaper wrote: “Mr Sunak does have the insurance that this is one of the safest Tory seats in the country, but he still has to prove himself to an electorate which will not be afraid to speak its mind.”

With the Tories 20 points behind in the polls, this still rings true, with much of the electorate have made their decision months out from polling day.

Upon leaving the Wetherspoons, it’s clear that one voter, leaning to shout out of his car window as he sped past the venue the Prime Minister had just left, has made his: “Rishi Out!”