Rishi Sunak revealed something shocking in an interview in Bali

I thought he was a good prime minister – but then Sunak said he’s a Beatles fan, writes John Rentoul

Sunak is my kind of centrist. He even sounds like Tony Blair (POOL/AFP/Getty)

As a Blairite, I have long thought that Rishi Sunak was the best of the available Conservative leadership candidates. He put up taxes to pay for the NHS. He even chose the same tax that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown put up to pay for the NHS in 2002: national insurance. What is not to like?

Sunak’s response to the coronavirus recession was pretty much what would have been expected of Brown if he had been chancellor at the time. The big, bold use of what Sunak called “the overwhelming might of the British state” to save people’s jobs with the furlough scheme and business support: it was so Gordon that I could imagine Tony, if he had been prime minister at the time, complaining that it was too left wing.

Sunak is my kind of centrist. He even sounds like Tony Blair: a pleasant timbre, a demotic-posh accent and the plain English of Bipartisan Reasonableness.