Beth Rigby tears into Sunak and asks brutal query – ‘worse than Truss’

Flustered Rishi Sunak was skewered over five years of Tory chaos as he heard his Government is as unpopular as Liz Truss’s disaster regime.

Sky News’ Beth Rigby told the under-fire PM that the latest YouGov poll puts his party on a paltry 18 points – almost neck-and-neck with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. She asked: “Your polling is now worse than in the Liz Truss Government. What’s going wrong?”

Struggling Mr Sunak conceded: “It hasn’t been an easy 18 months, I’m doing my best to keep going.” Ms Rigby then confronted him over the Tory chaos the country has endured since the 2019 election.

Ms Rigby asked him: “We’ve had three Prime Ministers, five Chancellors, five Home Secretaries, six Health Secretaries. How do we know that if you won the General Election, you’d still be Prime Minister in a year’s time?”

Mr Sunak – who has struggled to hold his warring party together in recent months – responded: “Look I can appreciate people’s frustrations. Of course, we haven’t got everything right. I don’t think any Government does. And I know it’s been very difficult for many people, but what I can do is work as hard as I can to deliver the stability that I said I would.”

The under-fire PM is facing a Sky News audience as he goes head-to-head with Keir Starmer three weeks ahead of the General Election. Mr Sunak is desperately trying to overturn a massive deficit three weeks before the UK goes to the polls.

Latest polling from Redfield & Wilton, based on a sample of 1,195 people, suggests the party will pick up 28% of the vote, while Labour will get 43%. The latest TV mauling was screened shortly after a tense interview with ITV’s Paul Brand aired.

Mr Brand told the PM that he could soon be facing his “biggest ever failure”. The interviewer went on to ask: “There’s a big chance you’ll lose. How will you cope with that?”

Mr Sunak claimed he hasn’t given any thought to losing, stating: “I’m focused on winning the election.” But when pressed, he conceded that he’ll rely on his family to help him after a defeat. He responded: “Well, I have a very loving family, they’re very supportive of me throughout my life. You don’t know the ins and outs of my entire life. Whenever I’ve had difficult times, my family were always there for me.”

In the ITV interview Mr Sunak also grumbled that he did not have Sky TV as a child. The super-rich PM laughed awkwardly as he was questioned by ITV interviewer Paul Brand on whether he understands the struggles facing ordinary families.

Mr Brand asked the PM “have you ever gone without something?” “Yes, I mean, my family emigrated here with very little. And that’s how I was raised. I was raised with the values of hard work,” the PM replied.

Pushed on what he’d gone without as a child, Mr Sunak said: “Oh, we went without lots of things because my parents wanted to put everything into our education and that was a priority.” But when asked what sort of things had to be sacrificed, he could only say: “Lots of things.” He then laughed.

Mr Sunak has been brutally mocked after the remarks, with a tongue-in-cheek fundraiser set up. More than £1,000 has been pledged for ‘Rishi Sunak’s Sky TV Fund’ – with the cash actually going to support food bank charity the Trussell Trust. The JustGiving page, set up after the PM struggled to name anything he’d gone without as a child, says viewers were “heartbroken” by his plight.

James Barisic, who set up the fundraiser – which includes a mocked-up image of the PM holding an old-fashioned TV set – said: “Millions of people across the UK were heartbroken to read the recent interview with Rishi Sunak when he revealed that, during his childhood, he had no access to Sky TV.

“Unlike thousands of children, Rishi’s deprived childhood included no satellite TV – a fate surely shared with his poverty-stricken friends who were also students at the private Winchester School. Despite this unimaginably tough start, Rishi worked hard and rose to a position where, as an investment banker, he earned millions after he bet on a bank that was subsequently bailed out by taxpayers.”