Sunak is a loser. But the best loser the Tories have

Rishi Sunak is very bad at politics. That he's also the best electoral asset the Tories have is therefore unfortunate for them.

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What does it mean to be “good at politics”? It’s a reasonable question as there are several different, interconnected answers.

One who is good at politics has to have a combination of some or all ofthe following qualities:

• Having and sticking to a central vision of what you want to achieve and keeping this as your lodestar, while being able to deal flexibly with anything else that comes along.

• Having a story to tell about why that is *your* personal mission, how you came to it and why it matters to you.

• Being a highly successful networker, able to convene different groups to inform and then champion your politics.

• Being a skilled communicator attuned to a range of very different audiences

• Being someone who can engage with - but not be bogged down in - policy.

• Managing competing internal and external interests leaving everyone feeling heard if not, necessarily, agreed with.

• Having a certain amount of charm or charisma and being able to balance competing interests while making each of the representatives of those interests feel at least heard - if not agreed with.

So let’s examine why I think Sunak is failing on each of these qualities.

Now, yes, of course, I am a partisan in this fight. I actively want Sunak to fail and for Labour to win the next election. But I am also a strategist and politics and communications specialist. And it will be with this hat that I will try to lay out the evidence of why Sunak is failing as much as possible. Because I genuinely believe that is the more helpful lens through which I can examine politics. I can no more will a successful politician into failure than I can fly to the moon. So it’s better to be honest when I think my opponents are strong. It’s just that I… don’t.

So let’s take the above criteria one by one and see how Sunak is doing.