Despite being designed and ready for production, the books were canceled amid a sense that Mr Sunak’s own financial credentials were no longer acceptable. Other internal policy upheavals followed. Three days later, on 30 July, a planned “anti-woke” speech promising a review of the Equality Act was sent to newspapers in advance and written up for the next day’s editions before being quietly canceled in the morning. The absence of the speech did not make headlines, but it came as a surprise to Mr Sunak’s team. “No one knew what was going on anymore, on the ground or at Headquarters,” said one frustrated employee. “If you were to really boil it down and say what went wrong, it was communication.” Three weeks later, another crowd-pleasing policy, raising the national speed limit to 80mph, was scrapped before being announced in a last-minute change to the Number 10-style ‘grid’ that governs the communications plan. Some attribute these failures to Mr. Sunak’s staff, many of whom have never worked on a leadership campaign. The day-to-day operations of the campaign are run by two of his closest advisers at the Treasury, Liam Booth-Smith and Rupert Yorke, with press handled by Nerissa Chesterfield, his former head of communications, and politics by James Nation , former special adviser. . The entire operation is chaired by one of Mr Sunack’s closest allies, Oliver Dowden, who presided over four major by-election defeats as Conservative Party chairman. The team is close, with Mr Booth-Smith handing out Kinder Eggs and pairs of socks as prizes to the hardest-working campaigners and hosting colleagues for dinners at his home. “It’s a very close-knit group and I think that’s one reason it didn’t do very well,” said one observer. “The people who were around him when things started going wrong are still the people in the room.”
