The rise and rise of Rishi Sunak is as captivating as Boris Johnson’s struggle to mimic Churchill

The chancellor has made an impressive start in the second most important job in government, but there will inevitably be hard times and hard decisions ahead

It seems petty to calculate political advantage in the middle of a great economic crisis, but it is worth noting when leaders appear to rise to events and when they fall short.

Rishi Sunak, who has been chancellor for five weeks, has been outstanding; while Boris Johnson, whose whole life has been a public preparation for such a moment, seems to be only just keeping his head above a rising tide of panic.

Sunak’s performance on Friday in No 10 – the address, not the job – was remarkable. He set out yet another escalation of the Treasury’s response to the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Nine days earlier, at the Budget, he had spent £30bn; six days after that, he added another £350bn; on Friday he said the government would pay 80 per cent of the wages of anyone furloughed and kept on their employer’s payroll, with “no limit to the amount of funding”.

He sounded like Gordon Brown at his best, taking decisive and dramatic action to meet the challenge of the financial crash. His approach was inclusive, consulting the Trades Union Congress as well as employers. Presumably, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, didn’t want to be consulted, and went on TV within minutes to complain that Sunak hadn’t gone far enough or fast enough.

This partisanship was in contrast with the reaction of Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, who praised Sunak for showing “real leadership”. Even Len McCluskey, McDonnell’s co-ideologue, said the chancellor had “done the right thing”.

While it is true that Sunak is coming under pressure, even from his own MPs, over the relative paucity of help for the self-employed, and will probably act on that next week, I think McDonnell has judged the public mood wrongly, and O’Grady and McCluskey have got it right.

This isn’t just about sounding good and engaging in bipartisan reasonableness, though. The measures themselves seem the right ones, and Sunak seems to know what he is doing; the policy detail is the work of heroic Treasury officials, but it helps to have a political leader who understands it.

When Sunak was promoted in February, there was a lot of talk about how he would be a mere pawn of Dominic Cummings and the prime minister, but that was never likely. The Treasury is a powerful department that cannot be run from No 10, and in a crisis, it becomes more powerful still – whoever the chancellor’s political advisers are.

What was most striking about Friday’s news conference, though, was Sunak’s final paragraph, in which he seemed to find the words that the prime minister could not: “We want to look back on this time and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency,” he said.

There is a divisiveness about Johnson that he cannot overcome. Even if he had matched the stature of his hero Winston Churchill in the past few days, a large part of public opinion would not have given him any credit. Hard Remainers will never forgive him for Brexit, and see him through that prism. Opinion polls this week suggesting that more of the public approve of his handling of the crisis than disapprove have been hailed by his equally partisan supporters as evidence that his critics have misjudged the national mood.

There is some truth in that, but Johnson is no Churchill. I have recently been looking through the earliest opinion polling in Great Britain, which started with Gallup in 1937. The figures for Churchill during the war are extraordinary. Gallup asked this question often: “In general, do you approve or disapprove of Mr Churchill as prime minister?” The figures for “approve” were between 82 and 93 per cent.

Compared with that, the 47 per cent who say Johnson has handled the coronavirus outbreak “well”, against the 38 per cent who say “badly”, is, well, lower.

Of course, it is too early to make any definite predictions about Johnson and his future, or indeed Sunak and his. Although Sunak has made an impressive start in the second most important job in government, he is inexperienced and there may be hard times and hard decisions ahead. So far, all he has had to do is announce that he is giving away vast amounts of money paid for on the never-never, whereas Johnson has had to tell people some of their loved ones will die.

Sunak’s later decisions may involve sharing out economic pain rather than trying to alleviate it. And Johnson has shown, in a long career at or near the political front line, that he has good judgement. You could call it low cunning if you don’t like him, and you could point out that he has sometimes been lucky – I still don’t know into which category to put Jo Swinson’s decision to give him a general election in December – but he is still in 10 Downing Street.

I wouldn’t bet against him still being there, with Sunak by his side, when all this is over.