Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet trudged up the gravel path at the British prime minister’s country residence on Thursday prepared for an awkward afternoon.
Sunak had invited his top team to Chequers for what was supposed to be a morale-boosting day 80 kilometers from the noise of Westminster. But his three-month old government was in a rut. Weeks of strikes have disrupted daily routines and even put the lives of British voters at risk while the drumbeat of poor economic data shows the country will get little respite in the short term and there’s little spare money to address problems before an election less than two years away.
But the prime minister was armed with research to show the situation was still salvageable — if his Cabinet could set aside their differences and focus on tackling the country’s problems.