It is common cause among Tory MPs that the next election has already been lost, and given the, ahem, wide range of intellectual capabilities present in that august group it shows just how obvious that insight is.
Now our prime minister is not a bear of little brain. Quite the reverse, he is very clever and meticulous. And if the rabble of backbench Tory MPs know it, then for all of his protestations otherwise, Sunak also knows it too.
Which is why when people were heard quietly describing this week’s AI summit as “the great interview” it all seemed to fall into place.
Why stay on for a life of arguing with Nigel Farage on GB News when you could take a senior role with one of the major tech companies and spend your days in Santa Monica discussing technology and the future of mankind?
Why struggle in the rain to address three students and a dog at a university Conservative Association meeting when you can have a rapt audience of clever young things hanging on your every word as you hold forth as a visiting professor at your old alma mater of Stamford?
Why give yourself indigestion on the rubber chicken constituency association dinner circuit when you can discuss the impact of AI on agriculture over dinner at the French Laundry in Napa?
He even already owns a flat there for goodness sake.
So how to ensure that you get the best offers possible? Easy, set up a summit and get all your potential future employers to come to you, while you bask in the limelight as the organising host of the kind of summit that is catnip to the tech boys and girls.
And you get to show them how well-connected you are by bringing along a bunch of other world leaders and movers and shakers. It is getting the tech companies to compete in a beauty parade with the prize of getting to hire him.
When you see this summit for what it is there is only one possible response: He’s a clever fella this Rishi Sunak.
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