Who is popular today?

We must hold the likes of Rishi Sunak and Andrew Cuomo to account, not fawn over their modest displays of competence

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One symptom of the coronavirus is losing your sense of taste. Apparently, this includes taste in men. One of the more bizarre features of the Covid-19 crisis has been the emergence of “pandemic pinups”. Cabin fever is making us turn problematic politicians into sex symbols.
Britain’s quarantine crush is Rishi Sunak, the 39-year-old chancellor who has won praise for his handling of the crisis. I report this with bile rising up my throat, but he is now known in some quarters as “Dishy Rishi”. Sunak is suddenly seen as sexy because we are despairing and he is vaguely competent. A GQ article penned by Flora Gill, the daughter of the former home secretary Amber Rudd, opines that he “represents hope that maybe the cabinet aren’t all blundering, confused buffoons, that maybe we’re going to be OK”. That is about the only quote from the article that it is safe to reproduce. Continue reading...