YET another admirable analytical piece by Joanna Cherry (The National, October 28): her acute assessment of legislative programmes in Holyrood and Westminster was at once both balanced and insightful. She voiced legitimate concerns, and provided clarity and sound evaluation of context, consequences and repercussions which may derive from inadequate scrutiny of bills by parliamentarians who, after all, are elected to govern on our behalf.

However, it was somewhat surprising to find this comment on the newest PM: “Unlike his immediate predecessors, he is not a lying charlatan, or a foolish, deluded ideologue.”

Although, indubitably, an incisive take on Johnson and Truss respectively, it did not grant quite the same keenness of judgement, given the evidence to date, on Sunak.

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Perhaps it is a determination made after the manner of Mark Antony regarding Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Thus it might be said: “And Sunak is an honourable man.” Surely a hint of this is in Ms Cherry’s subsequent elaboration of the PM’s decisions and instances of dubious judgement. It is hoped she will pardon such an imputation if it is very much wide of the mark.

Worth noting too, Antony emphasises that Caesar wept for the crying poor, thrice refused the “kingly crown”. The present Tory leadership class wouldn’t have been at all out of place on that Ides of March. They are known only too well to be quick to deliver, without mercy, “the unkindest cut of all”. To be sure, there are among them those whose ambition is tellingly of “sterner stuff”. But, of course, Sunak is an honourable man. Yet we must indeed, as Joanna indicates, “judge him by his actions”. Such a measuring of the man is not an ad hominem, rather “for men have lost their reason “ – a weighing, a pondering of the man’s “previous”.

This honourable man was Johnson’s chancellor and as such, attended at least one of the parties at No 10 and was rightly fined. He may make much of the furlough scheme but that overly vaunted largesse loses its glister against the removal of £20 from Universal Credit uplift payments. Whilst assimilating that, do contemplate the many millions of pounds given to him by wealthy backers (hedge fund managers, property developers and the like) during the Tory leadership campaign, his personal wealth and the former non-domicile status of his spouse, who can’t cope with acronyms – particularly the discombobulating HMRC. He is a smooth, indeed slick, operator.

And sure, Sunak is an honourable man.

Joanna chronicled more recent developments: the appointment of Braverman (a consummate Cabinet bungee-jumper), Raab and those that followed (Dowden, Williamson, Gove, Jenrick et al) since last Tuesday when he made that solitary and carefully choreographed walk along Downing Street. To have arrived accompanied, as new premiers normally are, might have conjured up negative imaging by bringing to mind certain taxing lacunae. That would have been all too un-slick. Moreover, the statement he made there: “This Government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”, had – and increasingly has – much of the oxymoron about it, and what Caesar says of Cassius, with apologies of course to the Bard, might easily be applied to citizen Sunak: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

Another, but a fitting, persona – and Johnson and Truss might nod in agreement. There is much indeed to weigh, to ponder, about this honourable man whom the people did not elect. Scotland, carpe diem!

Patrick Hynes

Airdrie