“As we gather here today,” said Akshata Murty, Rishi Sunak’s wife, “to look to the future of the UK … ” OK, I’ll be honest. The end of this sentence got lost to my internal cacophony. Are you allowed to say that about gathering? Don’t you have to go to vicar school first? It was a vanishingly short speech, introduced in winning style with a faux-prod at the prime minister that he didn’t have a clue what his wife was about to say. The audience laughed approvingly, imagining their quaking premier anticipating his acid-tongued wife. Would she reveal that he was aspirational? Or that he believed in fair play? Would she have loved him from the moment they first met, or the point at which she realised how fervently he believed in the rule of law? It was a high stakes game for Sunak, who’d had quite the morning, rendering ill-managed railway disappointment unto Manchester, while he was literally in Manchester.
Murty is an elegant speaker, rattling economically through the main events of his life, that he was born to a GP and a pharmacist, and that he met her when they were both 24. To adapt the “what do you get a guy who has everything?” motif, what do you say about this guy who has everything? You can’t mention his hobbies, as they’re probably … I don’t know, I’m trying to think of something more expensive than skiing. What do you say about a man who is too rich for you to be able to guess his hobbies? That he likes space polo? Personal details were limited to the fact that some of what you know about him is true – he likes romcoms – and other things are not. He does not take his strategy for Europe from Emily in Paris. Besides that, he believes in community and he wants “the next generation to grow up in a country of opportunity and hope”. The audience was so acquiescent in its laughs and general favour, so ready and willing to pretend they’d watched Emily in Paris, and hadn’t sat baying like hounds for the entire conference while assorted ministers spelled out the ways in which they planned to extinguish hope through a series of blockaded opportunities, that it felt like they weren’t a real audience at all, but had been press-ganged out of the local hostelries, for one daunting job. Sit in a hall and pretend to know what this Americanised fandango is all about.
That’s not fair, of course. The wives have done this in the past, and it was appalling. They got torn apart. In 2009, ah, heady days, Sarah Brown got pilloried for wearing a £600 dress, while Sam Cam, as Wotlo (wife of the leader of the opposition, dummy), was lauded for wearing something from M&S. For the record, Murty’s suit cost £385. Relax, everyone. The ladies have it. Gordon Brown was definitely a stealth member of the elite, and Cameron absolutely positively meant no harm to the poorest fifth of society, how could he, when his wife was stood right there, wearing something from the actual high street? Helpmeets steered clear after that. It is an appalling pantomime, in other words. The speeches say nothing, the unspoken signifiers signify nothing, and the best a wife can hope for is that the knives don’t come out for her because they’re busy elsewhere. But Murty’s kicker, of Rishi Sunak – a heartfelt “my best friend, your prime minister”? Lady, this rhetorical symmetry is way off. You chose him, we didn’t. None of us, not even the people in the hall.