Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak should know the pitfalls of a photo opportunity

There is a simple truth – no amount of artfulness can stop the truth cheekily poking its nose into a contrived attempt at PR, says Sean O’Grady

Full of it: Sunak at the pumps on Wednesday (HM Treasury)

All things considered, it’s been a bad week for the photo opportunity.

There were some truly wince-inducing pooled images being wired in from Jamaica of Kate and William in Trench Town. We’ve had Boris Johnson looking dishevelled, lonely, or both at the Nato summit. Or winning the gurning competition in the House of Commons on Wednesday. And of course the awful Instagram work of the team of Rishi “standing by the side of the people” Sunak.

In fact the chancellor of the exchequer couldn’t quite get standing by the side of a petrol pump right, looking cheerfully on as he pumped some unleaded into a modest car that didn’t actually belong to him (rather, apparently, someone working at the Sainsbury’s he was visiting). This was followed up by an Alan Partridge-like sequence where he clearly didn’t know how to use a contactless card. Remarkable, really, that an exercise designed to show how much he was in contact with the cost-of-living crisis had precisely the opposite effect: the contactless chancellor, in that sense, and inviting the now commonplace observation that he is a millionaire, with his wife being worth even more. She is said to be richer than the Queen, you know.