Rishi Sunak was a broken man on BBC Question Time

LONDON — They couldn’t even clap him.

The contempt oozing off the audience when Rishi Sunak entered the room for his BBC Question Time grilling Thursday night was already so intense that at least half chose to sit on their hands.

Denied the common decency of a welcoming applause, the British prime minister, staring down the barrel of an historic election defeat in less than two weeks, looked red-eyed, hang dog.

As host Fiona Bruce read out the charge sheet of the latest scandal, on allegations those in Sunak’s orbit used insider status to place bets on the election date, he appeared a broken man. At times the encounter between a prime minister and the voters he seems to sneer at when they refuse to see things his way was actually uncomfortable to watch.

Britain is a place prone to fads and crazes, and we like to defy authority. It’s why we took the deplorable Mr Blobby to No. 1 and named a ship “Boaty McBoatface.”

Unfortunately for Rishi Sunak, the current craze is to hate on the Tories.

What started at the beginning of the election campaign as a shift in mood from the Conservatives to Labour has become a cascading tsunami of almost gleeful loathing for the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, which looks set to sweep Sunak clear away on July 4.

Rishi’s death rattle

The antipathy was clear from the moment the prime minister entered the room and faced the clued up, eloquent audience members.

His responses were a death rattle, the atmosphere heated, tense. The subtext was clear: he knows it’s over; the public knows it’s over. What point is there in continuing with this charade, other than to allow voters to enjoy their new sport: Rishi bashing?

They disrespected him with jeers and boos. Asked about the lack of ethics displayed by his party, he blinked painfully slowly. Probed as to why, even now, he has failed to suspend candidates caught up in the betting scandal, he promised to boot out anyone found to have done wrong — leaving a pause for applause that never came.

Instead, the claps came when his opponents — facing their own grilling from the audience — traduced him.

It is unprecedented for a prime minister to spend a full day away from the campaign trail two weeks before polling day, as Sunak did to prepare for this bout. He wanted to get it right.

The British prime minister looked red-eyed, hang dog. | Pool Photo by Stefan Rousseau via Getty Images

He didn’t. The hours Sunak spent prepping were apparent from his slick answers. But when he trotted out the line that voters should trust him because “my grandparents came to this country with very little, and in two generations I’m standing here as your prime minister,” he merely sounded desperate.

He clearly hadn’t practiced hard enough to lose the tetchy edge when he dismissed audience concerns about National Health Service waiting lists or the morality of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.

Starmer plays it safe

In comparison, Labour Leader Keir Starmer, grilled in the half hour before Sunak, was solid; stodgy.

He faced awkward questions about his previous backing for hard-left predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, and a tough time from an exhausted nurse who just didn’t believe his NHS promises.

But the audience didn’t even snigger when, grilled about his position on transgender rights, Starmer said not only “penis” but also “vagina” — on the Question Time stage!

The reaction of those questioning him seemed pretty clear: you can’t really warm to the guy, but serious times call for serious people.

In the end, this night was all about Rishi Sunak and his dawning realization that few seem to share his view of his own brilliance.

“Judge me on my 18 months in office,” he told the voters watching the horror show unfold at home. The trouble for him is — they will.