Sunak’s self-deprecating joke at PMQs was a reminder he was popular once

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. I can’t imagine sitting little Ryan Coogan III down on my knee and trying to impress upon him that, yes, politicians have always taken little jabs at each other, but they used to stop short of going full Regina George. The man who coined “Sir Softie”, a nickname for Starmer so lame and ineffective that all it did was remind voters his opponent had received one of the country’s highest honours? I was a little worried that he’d take the Liz Truss route, where the sting of defeat would cause him to ingratiate himself with the right-wing American media ecosystem and start banging on about the “deep state” sabotaging his otherwise perfect political record. Sure, it’s not great to draw a dichotomy between “Arabs” and “decent family men”, but it was still a lot better than in 2016, when discourse had soured so much that even McCain found himself accusing the former president of being “directly responsible” for the Orlando nightclub shooting.