His personal polling is much better than that of his Conservative Party. Maybe that is one reason why the Labour Party chief Keri Starmer had chosen to make personal attacks against the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in advertisements that blamed him for many things, including bizarrely of him not wanting child sex abusers to go to prison.
The advertisements also attacked Sunak”s wife Akshata Murthy, an obvious soft target but one who may have left herself vulnerable with her non-domicile tax status that saw her avoid paying income-tax in Britain on her considerable earnings and assets till it became a matter of public debate and then she relented to pay tax in the UK.
The attacks got to a point of triggering whispers within the Labour Party itself over such personal attacks for the sake of possible electoral gains as local polls are due in early May. Such campaigns at the hustings and even on the floor of Parliament are not unknown in democracies, In fact, they are par for the course. Even so, it appeared lines were being freely crossed in pointed advertisements.
Targeted unfairly or not, and probably thankful that some Labour MPs revolted against the campaign of Starmer and his inner team, Sunak has been going about his job as a technocrat in the PM’s seat, solving problems, or at least boldly attempting to, however uncomfortable or ironic some may have seemed like his attempts to stop illegal migrants in cross-Channel boats and his support of migrant centres in Rwanda.
“To run as fast and as hard as we can” is said to be his mantra and it does appear that the gigantic problems of inner Tory party skirmishes for power before and after Boris Johnson and of the economy now seem to be in the rear view mirror rather than appearing to be up ahead and insurmountable.
Labour, which has never had anyone heading it except white males, might be displaying its dislike of Britain’s first Hindu Prime Minister, but its campaign may just backfire considering how opinion polls are getting somewhat kinder to the Tories ahead of this year’s local polls and next year’s big showdown in the general elections.
