Rishi Sunak must get fired up after a whole summer of wasted opportunities – the Tories are falling apart

“WE are fired up . . . I’m hungry to win,” jaunty Rishi Sunak said in Delhi last week.

“I’ll show the British people what I am capable of in the time I have now before the election.”

Yes, Prime Minister — but you had better get a move on because a whole summer of wasted opportunities has passed, the Tories are falling apart and we are already in election mode.

Voters have returned from holiday to a country where nothing seems to work — including FIVE MILLION reclining at home on out-of-work benefits.

Labour leader Keir Starmer is measuring up for Number Ten and even the resolutely loyal Tory faithful have given up the ghost.

A Conservative Home poll yesterday showed more than half of Tory members (53 per cent) think Labour will win outright — up from 40 per cent last month.

Shockingly, just nine per cent of true-blue, card-carrying Tories think the same about their own chances.

Nothing is going right for this regime, tired after 13 years of turbulent drift.

It is taking a kicking, rightly or wrongly, for every new catastrophe, from crumbling schools to giggling jailbreakers.

Rishi is rolled up in a ­defensive ball while Labour piles in with hobnail boots.

Fired up? Hungry to win? Where’s the evidence?

From the ghost ship Bibby Stockholm to the latest surrender on green levies and a shocking delay in protecting schoolchildren from trans fanatics, this is a government of dither and delay.

The vaunted Cabinet reshuffle came and went without a ripple.

Even the rare success story — such as the Ulez by-election victory in Uxbridge — is almost forgotten.

Spurious claims

Boris Johnson memorably nailed Labour bore Sir Keir Starmer as Captain Crash- eroonie Snoozefest.

Rishi Sunak, say critics, looks more like Dr Doolittle.

While the PM and Home Secretary Suella Braverman promise action to stop asylum cheats, people smugglers are using this lovely boating ­weather to ferry thousands across the Channel.

More than 25,000 of these mostly fraudulent cases have arrived so far this year and will barge their way into taxpayer-funded B&Bs.

There is even talk of an amnesty for the estimated 1.2million illegals already here — an open invitation to millions more to come and stay.

We have seen Rwanda deportation plans sidelined in the Supreme Court — and the Bibby Stockholm holiday hotel lying empty amid spurious elf ’n’ safety claims.

So who’s in charge? The shroud-waving human rights industry? Or a government elected with a landslide majority to exercise the power of parliamentary sovereignty?

Is it the rule of law, or rule by lawyers?

Last week we saw struggling consumers hit by new laws forcing energy consumers to buy smart technology while Downing Street caved in to ugly onshore windmills.

It’s not even as if Rishi supports the sackcloth-and-ashes zealots who are forcing hard-pressed voters to spend huge chunks of taxed income on green levies and hidden taxes.

He knows that if anyone is “fired up” it is the motorist who has to pay through the nose in fines and levies for the demented demands of what many regard as a “quasi-religious cult”.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s £12.50 Ulez fraud is just the latest target of public fury.

Downing Street was stunned last week by Professor Matt ­Goodwin’s poll in The Sun which exposed seething anger over green policies which pick the pockets of cash-strapped readers.

Funding fanaticism

Half of the voters who backed Boris Johnson’s landslide win in 2019 have now abandoned the party, he says.

And only a derisory 16 per cent — one in six — are ­prepared to pay more to ­prioritise Net Zero.

Even ex-Labour PM Tony Blair points to the futility of Net Zero deadlines for the UK, which emits one per cent of world carbon emissions while China alone belches out THIRTY TIMES as much.

Yet green nut Ed Miliband remains in charge of Keir Starmer’s climate purity squad.

Sun readers, including White Van Man and millions of ­ordinary motorists, are sick to the back teeth of funding fanaticism.

And they will be the voters who decide who wins the next election.

If Rishi wants to show them what he’s really capable of, he needs to pull his finger out.