Sunak must have lost his marbles to snub Greek PM

When Conservative MPs think the spat with Greece is a ploy to distract them from immigration policy, the prime minister has a problem, warns John Rentoul

Prime minister Rishi Sunak decided against meeting his Greek counterpart after he spoke publicly about wanting the return of the Elgin Marbles (PA)

Most British people think the Elgin marbles should go back to Greece. Of the rest, half don’t care and only half – 21 per cent – think that the UK should keep them. Appealing to that 21 per cent really would be a core-vote strategy.

So why did Rishi Sunak refuse to meet the Greek prime minister? The No 10 line is that Kyriakos Mitsotakis went back on a deal not to mention what he calls the Parthenon sculptures by going on TV last Sunday to say he wanted them back.

This would appear to be a misunderstanding of the basic rules of politics: if you do a deal with someone and they break it, you have to judge whether anyone else cares. Sunak should know this better than most because he has just been accused of reneging on a deal with Suella Braverman, the recent home secretary. Most people think he was right to sack her, even if a lot of them might agree with the policies that Braverman claims Sunak signed up to.

The prime minister’s behaviour is so baffling that it has spawned a conspiracy theory among Conservative backbenchers, who think the spat with Greece is a “dead cat” to try to distract them from the immigration numbers. Whenever you see the phrase “dead cat”, it is usually a reliable indicator of social media nonsense, usually from accounts littered with the acronyms of virtue signalling. In this world, virtually everything the government does is a sinister attempt to distract from virtually everything else the government does.

When Conservative MPs fall prey to this kind of thinking, though, you know something is wrong. It is still nonsense: the idea that Sunak would do something that makes him look bad to distract from something else that makes him look bad lacks basic plausibility. In a way, it is worse than that, because the prime minister must have thought that it would make him look good to get into a childish row with a Nato ally.

If you are going to stand up to a foreign leader, it helps if it is on an issue that more than a tiny minority feel strongly about

Instead, no one outside No 10 can understand it. Why wouldn’t you welcome Mitsotakis to Downing Street, say that you had a constructive discussion and that you disagreed about the stones? Why wouldn’t you look forward to working with him on the shared problems of illegal migration? Why would you allow Keir Starmer, who met Mitsotakis yesterday and engaged in precisely such discussions, to look like a dignified leader?

If anyone in No 10 thought that “standing up to a foreign leader” would play well with the Tory base, they misjudged it. You look much stronger standing up to a foreign leader if you have them in and say it to their face, instead of refusing to see them. Conceding the high moral ground to Mitsotakis is a silly mistake, allowing him to say, with some justification: “Anyone who believes in the correctness and justice of their positions is never afraid of opposing arguments.”

And if you are going to stand up to a foreign leader, it helps if it is on an issue that more than a tiny minority feel strongly about.

It must be assumed, therefore, that Sunak was so cross about Mitsotakis going back on a private deal that he reacted emotionally rather than rationally. It is quite possible that the Greek prime minister, in an attempt to appeal to his own nationalist audience, has scuppered talks with George Osborne, chair of the British Museum, about a temporary return of the Marbles.

But Sunak was drafted as prime minister precisely because he was competent and rational. He was supposed to resist the temptation to do foolish things simply to try to appeal to elements of the Tory base.

And he was supposed to keep the touchy side of his nature in check. On this issue, he seems to have given full reign to peevishness.

Sunak seems to be hurtling surprisingly quickly into the doom loop, where nothing goes right – and, worse, where the prime minister seems sulky about it.