Labour owns Rishi Sunak with amusing helicopter photoshop

Labour has owned Rishi Sunak with a hilarious helicopter photoshop mocking how often he zips around the country in the sky.

In a post on social media, the party edited the PM into a chopper on the door of No10 Downing Street with a cartoon lead coming out the window and attached to a dog. The caption stated simply: “Rishi Sunak taking his dog for a walk.”

Labour mocked Mr Sunak’s constant jet-setting after the Mirror revealed the PM returned from a campaign trip to Devon and Cornwall by private helicopter – after gushing about how wonderful train travel is. The Prime Minister travelled to Penzance by sleeper train on Wednesday for a day on the campaign trail.

He told broadcasters: “The train was great, I’ve been taking lots of pictures and videos, sending them back to my kids and saying we’ll be back here as a family at some point. I’m excited to be out and about in Cornwall and heading up to Devon later today.”

But rather than enjoy the “great” train home again that night, Mr Sunak is understood to have used a helicopter for the 45-minute return flight at an estimated cost of £2,500. Trains run once an hour from Honiton to London and take just 3 hours – at a cost of £55 for a standard seat. They ran until around 9pm last night – long after the PM left Devon.

Mr Sunak is well known for his love of taking private aircraft around the country – often for journeys that could easily be made by train. He rented an Eastern Airways Jetstream 41 turboprop plane for a trip around the country on the first day of campaigning last week.

Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho was last week confronted over whether it was “a good look” for the PM to zip around the country in the sky for brief campaign visits. But she dismissed the question and in a bizarre defence said Mr Sunak travelling by private jet was not going to “make a massive difference when it comes to carbon emissions”.

During his time in Downing Street, Mr Sunak has used private jets and helicopters to zip around the UK more than any other Prime Minister. According to analysis last summer, the PM took one flight every eight days on average up to that point. Many of the journeys are very short, such as when he used a helicopter to visit Southampton, which would have taken just over an hour by train.

Two thirds of voters say Mr Sunak’s private jet habit is a bad use of taxpayers’ money. Some 66% don’t think it’s good value for the Prime Minister to take a private helicopter or jet to save time – including 56% of staunch Conservatives.

Research by More in Common, published last month, found some 66% of people intending to vote Conservative think it is “rarely” or “never” appropriate for politicians to travel domestically by plane, compared to 64% of the public. Meanwhile, more than half (52%) of voters believe those who fly by private jet should be charged more per flight in order to pay for green technologies.

Labour’s Rachel Reeves last year pledged to clamp down on ministers using private jets when they could get a regular flight. The Shadow Chancellor told Brits she wants “people to say ‘I can trust her with my money’.” Three quarters of the public back the plan, with just 5% thinking it a bad idea, the poll found.