What do Rishi Sunak and Donald Trump have in common? Though their political styles differ there is surprising overlap between the pair. Both Sunak and Trump are fans of Mexican coke, made with real cane sugar. Both gorged themselves on business riches before deciding to enter the field of politics for stimulation in later life. Donald Trump famously foreswore drinking because of his brother’s alcoholism, Sunak also refuses to drink alcohol despite himself being from a family of drinkers.
Above these overlaps in personality both Sunak and Trump have common ground on the three existential events of the past decade.
Both Donald Trump and Rishi Sunak have expressed scepticism about the cost of the war in Ukraine. Trump’s position on this issue is well-rehearsed, but it is often forgotten that Sunak consistently refused to raise defence spending when he was in the Treasury, and when running for the Tory leadership was honest enough to call the 3% defence target set by Johnson (which Truss committed to) ‘arbitrary’. Sunak’s genius in government was to talk up the ‘indo-pacific tilt’, the idea that Britain should begin to lean away from the European theatre to instead confront China. This ‘tilt’, which amounted to deploying our aircraft carrier in the Pacific and utilising our ‘diplomatic leverage’ made for an excellent distraction from the Ukraine forever war. Sunak also managed to avoid designating China as a ‘threat’ despite his premiership coinciding with the high point of late 2010-24 Tory sabre-rattling.
