Awkward second Rishi Sunak mocked by small boat activists in dwell interview

Rishi Sunak was photo-bombed by a group of Liberal Democrats on a boat as he filmed a TV clip.

In an embarrassing moment for the Prime Minister, the campaigners floated behind him waving placards as he was filmed by broadcasters. Social media users mocked the video as they said it looked like a moment from satire ‘The Thick Of It’.

A Lib Dem source said: “This is just another small boat Rishi Sunak can’t deal with. There’s no rowing back from his record on soaring NHS waiting lists and rivers ruined by sewage.” The party had been out campaigning on sewage leaks as they took a boat down the Thames in Henley in Oxfordshire. The PM responded on Twitter to the stunt: “Classic Lib Dems, always selling voters down the river.”

A later video appeared to show the PM running away from the area as the Lib Dems turned their boat around to pass by him again. A Lib Dem source added: “Rattled Rishi is on the run in former Conservative heartlands.. It’s not the first time the Prime Minister has run scared of the Liberal Democrats. Rishi Sunak’s desperate attempts to cling onto power simply won’t wash with voters after years of broken Conservative promises.”

The Lib Dems are focusing on taking on the Conservatives in true blue areas in the south of England, like Boris Johnson’s former seat of Henley. Just over the river in Wokingham, John Redwood stood down, which the Lib Dems have seized upon as a sign the Conservatives are running scared.

Earlier Mr Sunak recorded a TV interview where he was asked about whether he was stoking culture wars with his pledge to overhaul equality laws. He was pressed on a tweet from the Conservative party that said: “We know what a woman is. Keir Starmer doesn’t.”

The Prime Minister denied he was stoking culture wars instead saying his plan “builds on our track record of treating these issues sensitively and with compassion, as of course we should, but ensuring that our laws are right, our guidance is right to protect the safety and security of women and girls and the wellbeing of our children. And I think that’s paramount in all of our minds.”

Tory Eliot Colburn hit out at the tweet with a caption: “Here we go again, wondered how long it would take.” It came as the Conservatives announced an election campaign proposal to amend the Equality Act to make clear sex means “biological sex” rather than gender.

The Tories say the change will make it simpler for service providers for women and girls, such as those running sessions for domestic abuse victims, to prevent biological males from taking part. But opposition parties criticised Mr Sunak’s party for waging “phony culture wars”.

Tetchy Kemi Badenoch hit out at a BBC presenter who was asking “very technical” details about her own party’s plans to amend equality laws. The Minister for Women and Equalities was tied in knots when she was asked what kind of paperwork people would need to show to use single-sex spaces under the plans. She said she was being asked about “very technical scenarios” and insisted “this is not a paperwork issue” when challenged repeatedly whether this would mean only an original birth certificate would be accepted.