Political column – March 23

As Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt brainstorm in their bunker on ways to salvage the next general election, there is a last hope. To make the Rwanda policy work – or at least look like it might work.

If they could get a single person sent to Rwanda, they could claim success for their brainwave strategy to Stop The Boats.

It would be just a molecule in a drop in the ocean, especially considering the UK population is projected to increase by seven million in just 15 years – and that's only the people in the country that officialdom knows about. But much of politics is about perception rather than reality.

If sending somebody, anybody, to Rwanda, has electoral benefits, it would be millions well spent. Take that, Sir Keir Starmer.

In the current atmosphere the Tory leadership must be tearing their hair out. Whatever they do is making no difference in the opinion polls, which remain stubbornly negative.

They are almost out of cards to play and if Jeremy Hunt was hoping for a Budget bounce, he's been sorely disappointed. When a brand is tarnished, there is nothing that can be done to recover other than to rename the brand, as Gerald Ratner, and others, demonstrated, but that is not an option for the Conservative Party.

Pensioners noticed that cutting National Insurance did nothing for them, and while the fall in inflation is welcome, it had to go up to come down, so there's no credit to be had on that score.

The old standby to grub up some extra approval from the voters used to be doing something generous on the fags and booze front, but these days nobody seems to care about those. Freezing fuel duty is an inadequate substitute.

Rishi Sunak says things are starting to look up on the economy, but if you look for a feelgood factor it's in short supply and somebody is going to cop the blame at election time – and Tory MPs have a good idea who it will be.

They have this feeling that they may soon be taking their special talents to the employment market. Now would be a good time to line up some directorships.

Meanwhile Liz Truss, whose heroic tenure at the top was cruelly brought down by a bunch of cigar-smoking capitalists in the City gambling den, has been reborn as an invisible parrot sitting on the shoulders of politicians, squawking a mantra of "growth, growth, growth," although that triple whammy is so associated with Liz's derided term that they have to ration themselves to a single growth utterance.

Yes, it is growth which is going to pay for everything now that Britons are fully taxed out and there's nothing left stuffed at the back of the sofa.

Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor, had the invisible parrot whispering in her ear during her much- trumpeted speech to business and finance leaders this week.

Unless you get growth, you are always going to have to make almost impossible trade-offs, Rachel says.

Time for change, Labour says. Funny, that. She sounded and looked every inch like a product of Conservative campaign HQ.

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The footage of the Princess of Wales out shopping at a farm shop is the most sensational story of its genre since the paparazzi took a photo of Benny Hill doing his own shopping and even carrying his own supermarket shopping bags.

Things have come to a pretty pass when they can no longer hire minions to do such tasks, but ever since the war it has been difficult to get the staff. Nevertheless you would though think that the royals could go online to shop rather than mix with the hoi polloi armed mobile phone cameras.

A couple of random facts about Benny Hill. When Frankie Howerd died, a national newspaper carried a quote from Benny paying Frankie a generous tribute. This turned out to be very odd because Benny was, in fact, dead himself.

This became apparent when his body was discovered at his flat after several days of unanswered phone calls.

Also, despite being a millionaire, his mantelpiece was full of uncashed cheques. A bachelor thing, I suspect.