He seemed most ill-at-ease with questions about his controversial reappointment of Suella Braverman to the Home Office. She was fired by Truss (it's hard to keep up with all the different names and who did what) for using a personal email account to send draft government documents to Sir John Hayes, an ordinary back-bencher, and accidentally copying in a researcher to Andrew Percy MP for Goole instead of Hayes' wife. Quite what Hayes' wife was doing with that sort of stuff I'm not sure.
An anonymous source told The Sun: “Suella has tried to play down the scale of the cock-up but it was incendiary market-sensitive information.”
In her resignation letter she said this:
"As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary. As Home Secretary, I hold myself to the highest standards and my resignation is the right thing to do. The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes. Pretending we haven't made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can't see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right are not serious polities. I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility: I resign."
Sunak repeated the form of words more or less, insisting: “She raised the matter and she accepted her mistake.”
It now looks as if that wasn't true. This means in addition to several other firsts as I listed on Wednesday. He may also be the first PM to mislead parliament in his first PMQs. Quite a record, eh?
According to The Guardian Braverman didn't 'realise her mistake' until it was pointed out to her by her own permanent secretary at the Home Office, Matthew Rycroft. The actual route by which she learned of it was this as far as I can see:
Percy's researcher told him, and he told the chief whip, Wendy Morton. I'm not clear how but Simon Case the cabinet secretary was informed and he advised both Rycroft and Truss that the ministerial code had been broken. I assume it was Truss who told Braverman she had made a mistake.
Braverman's disingenuous answer was as if you had realised you had broken the law and confessed to it just after the police came to arrest you. It doesn't really wash, does it?
But it leaves Sunak with a bigger problem - particularly in these febrile times where the last PM but one is being investigated for potentially misleading the House.
Yesterday, Downing Street defended Sunak’s version of events. A spokesman said: “He said she had raised it, but we are not going to get into conversations and timelines around this. As we have said before, the home secretary made an error of judgment and took accountability for her actions.”
Asked if the prime minister’s words were accurate, the spokesperson said: “Yes.”
It's blindingly obvious Sunak had done a deal with Braverman about the Home Secretary job. He is said to have made four calls to her over the weekend, fearing that she would come out in support of Boris Johnson and he would then get comfortably over the 100 nominations to take it to a members vote and win.
You can imagine how Braverman played him like a fish, holding out for the top job at the Home Office until he panicked and committed to it, something he probably now regrets.
I don't think there is any doubt that Sunak is a more logical person than either Johnson or Truss but he is discovering the hard way you need more than logic to stay on the greasy pole. He may not last that long himself.
The next big issues are Northern Ireland where new elections are to be called for December in an effort to reset Stormont. They will almost certainly fail until the NIP is resolved.
And he has upset the environmental lobby by refusing to attend COP27 in Egypt. Things come at you fast in No 10 and the week isn't over yet.
