Rishi Sunak is Breaking the Triple Tory Habit of Failure

Britain has had three failed prime ministers in a row. Theresa May was a senior civil servant rather than a politician. Boris Johnson was a brilliant campaigner but a lousy chief executive. As for Liz Truss, the less said the better.

For a while, it looked as if Rishi Sunak might be the frightful fourth: too rich for an out-at-the-elbows country and too slick for a people who like to imagine their leaders in taverns named The Dog and Duck. His “five priorities” came across as boring and technocratic — the sort of thing that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managers send to their subordinates. He idiotically failed to meet the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis arguably his closest soulmate in the European Union — when he was in Britain. Johnson’s supporters were itching for a fight. Even Truss briefly reemerged from her cave to deliver a lecture on growth.