It’s silly season and Westminster has wasted no time in making a complete fool of itself

Rishi Sunak can pour himself a decent pint, writes Tom Peck, but is anyone drinking his economic Kool-Aid?

Rishi Sunak’s claim over waiting times was challenged by a junior doctor (Daniel Leal/PA) (PA Wire)

Once upon a time, ‘silly season’ meant that unimportant and rather odd stories would dominate the news cycle during the summer, in the absence of anything important to worry about.

Westminster, through absolutely no one’s fault but its own, has forgotten what silly season feels like, having not let a summer pass in almost a full decade without some kind of election or referendum or leadership challenge or change of government or some other deeply self-indulgent manifestation of their own self-importance.

What appears to have emerged on the other side of this is a new interpretation of silly season, which is members of parliament making deliberate fools of themselves just to get in on the act.

Rishi Sunak has announced with great excitement the introduction of a new duty regime on alcohol, which he reckons is only possible now we have left the EU. His announcement on social media has attracted the rare honour of an actual head of state having a fake news warning attached to his post, to make clear that what he is saying is not true. The last, and almost certainly only world leader to whom this has happened is Donald Trump.

Naturally, he couldn’t prevent himself from going to a pub to pour a pint, because what politician has ever walked into a pub without immediately calling in the news cameras and then going behind the bar and pouring themselves a beer? Someone on the internet rather cruelly doctored this picture, to suggest that the pint the prime minister poured was of poor quality. Said picture has been shared by large numbers of Labour MPs, most of them, it is safe to assume, by accident.

This, you must be aware, is a deeply serious matter. Alician Kearns MP, chair of the foreign affairs of select committee, wants it to be known that, “The sharing of a doctored image by so many Labour MPs, who by now know it’s fake yet haven’t deleted it, is demeaning of politics.”

This, in case you’ve already forgotten, is a picture of the prime minister pouring a pint. A prime minister, don’t forget, who has never actually drunk one, not that that is a crime, and who, three years ago, without anyone doing any doctoring, tweeted a picture of himself claiming, “I can’t wait to get back to the pub” while raising his arms and pointing at what was very obviously not a pub but a hardware shop.

Where, exactly, does the demeaning begin? You would think politics has been a bit demeaned by the prime minister having to have social media companies point out that what he has said isn’t true. You could argue, could you not, that the need to have your picture taken pouring a pint at all is demeaning.

Or what about the more serious stuff? The Bank of England has raised interest rates for the fourteenth consecutive time, and Rishi Sunak has accompanied their decision with a little video of himself, talking about how it’s the ‘right thing to do’, how he won’t back down from the ‘challenge’ of halving inflation.

You don’t have to really know anything at all about economics to be demeaned. The ‘challenge’ of inflation has been taken on by the Bank of England taking difficult decisions. If governments want to take on the challenge of inflation there are two and only two things they can do. One is to raise taxes, which he is never going to do, because he likes to brand himself as a tax cutting chancellor despite not cutting them. And the other is cutting public spending, which he also hasn’t done, but has instead signed a 6.5 per cent pay increase for public sector workers at the same time as blaming them for rising hospital waiting lists which are a lot less than 6.5 per cent their fault.

You might also wish to a feel bit demeaned by a prime minister, a chancellor, and in fairness, an opposition party too, who can’t quite bring themselves to say the thing that every single economist at every economic institution in the world, who has quietly been saying the same thing for a very long time - that inflation is far worse in the UK than any comparable economy because of its banjaxed labour market and its decision to impose import controls on itself from the entire European continent. The B-word that no one dare say.

Indeed, the only brave decision Rishi Sunak has made is the one that he isn’t brave enough to take any credit for, which is suspending, yet again, checks on imports of food from the EU, which once upon a time was supposedly one of Brexit’s glittering prizes but which, years later, still nobody actually wants. It is the only thing the government has actually done to deal with inflation - quietly ignore its Brexit obligations and hope that no one notices.

But yes, in the interests of fairness, it should be stated that, on the available evidence, Rishi Sunak can pour a passable pint. It’s up to you, however, if you really want to drink it.