Rishi Sunak has been accused of alienating voters during his disastrous General Election campaign – and now he’s scared a flock of sheep away too.
The Prime Minister is out in North Devon today, where he spoke to a group of fishermen catching lobster and took a trip out on a fishing boat amid choppy waters. When he arrived back on shore, he headed to visit a farm alongside David Cameron. But things didn’t quite go to plan.
Mr Sunak and David Cameron were seen struggling to feed the sheep during the visit, leading the farmer accompanying them to try and awkwardly help out. In the painful clip shared to X, formerly Twitter, the Prime Minister is seen holding a green bucket of food, attempting to feed the flurry of sheep. Wearing a green wooly jumper and walking boots, the casually clad PM is evaded by the farm animals as they all scurry away, bleeting.
“Come on”, the Prime Minister said as the flock ran away to the other side of the pen. “They don’t want to play ball,” farmer David Chugg jibed, only adding to the mortifying moment.
Brits couldn’t help but draw parallels between the reluctant sheep and British voters, as one took to X, formerly Twitter, to write: “Just like the electorate”. Another asked: “This isn’t real surely?!! Must be AI?!”
A third quipped: “It’s like a microcosm of society. Except for the feeding bit.” And someone else joked: “No thanks been fleeced once.”
Another X user jibed: “Even the sheep know that Rishi Sunak would be an AWFUL Prime Minister.”
During the visit, the PM said that “understanding” farmers’ “contribution” to society had been a “privilege”. Mr Sunak said: “Now, I grew up in Southampton, and I didn’t come from a farming background. So it’s been a real privilege to understand the contribution that you make to our society.”
Mr Sunak also reaffirmed his commitment to badger culling in bid to win over rural voters. He said it has “to be part of the solution” for preventing the spread bovine tuberculosis to cattle. Speaking in a Q&A with farmers, the PM said: “The success of the badger culls where we’ve done them have brought the incidence rates down by just over 50%, so that shows that that plan is working.”
The sheep fiasco comes as Mr Sunak was slammed for telling voters to ‘buy British’ as the perils of Brexit continue to hit households across the country.
Amid his farm visit, Mr Sunak took to X today to write, “We shouldn’t be reliant on foreign food. Buy British.” The replies are swamped with people explaining exactly why it’s a struggle to buy local in Britain.
Fiercely shutting down the PM’s plea, one woman wrote: “Your govt have ensured British farming is in crisis! You’ve allowed foreign imports to crush British food, removed our Labour supply and subsidies, put trade barriers in the way and paid us to plant flowers!”
Meanwhile, another bluntly quipped: “People shouldn’t be reliant on foodbanks, but 14 years of the bloody tories have made that all possible.” A third simply asked: “Why did you make it harder for farmers to supply it then, genius?”
A report last year by the London School of Economics (LSE) revealed that British households have paid a staggering £7bn since Brexit to cover the extra cost of trade barriers on food imports from the EU. The researchers reported that trade barriers are consistently hampering imports, hiking up bills by an average £250 during the cost of living crisis.