It was Instagram that made me realise I wasn’t alone. These are topsy-turvy times, we must seek kinship where we can find it. And so, when I noticed several of my female friends had also liked Rishi Sunak’s picture – you know the one, he’s in glasses and a hoodie, a red Treasury file slung across the desk (caption: #stayhomesavelives) – I felt liberated, finally, to reach out. And thus, an informal WhatsApp fan club was born.

“I dunno what it is,” one swooned. “Maybe the hoodie?” “Do you think he’s got it?” asked another, anxious that the chancellor might have been exposed to Covid-19 during a cabinet meeting. “I think he’d GET it”, retorted another, with real Hen Do Energy. “He’s just very my type circa 2008.”

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That’s it, isn’t it? Swotty Sunak reminds you of the medic you had a crush on in the first term of your first year: smart, focused and earnest, bright eyes twinkling with sincerity, the good cop to the bad cop of the boy you inevitably went out with (never called; got off with your friend in a sweaty basement club; told you you were “overreacting”).

© Instagram / @rishisunakmp

Granted, these are extraordinary circumstances. A Tory chancellor is not, traditionally, an object of lust – certainly not for the left-leaning women I hang out with. Indeed, on paper, Chancellor of the Exchequer is one of the least fanciable of all cabinet positions: a big bad wolf of Whitehall, licking his chops as he pinches pennies. But when Dishy Rishi takes his turn at the podium, no one is booing.

It helps, of course, that he found the magic money tree. Sunak’s response to the stranglehold of coronavirus has been to spend, spend, spend – not very Conservative – and promise ambitious safety nets for those in need. The measures are not perfect, but it’s a novelty to have a Tory chancellor who feels like he’s in your corner. “For the first time in our history, our government is going to pay people’s wages,” he announced in a briefing on 20 March. “We want to look back on this time and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency.” Swoon.

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He is working 18-hour days, strategising for a surreal catastrophe for which there is no playbook, and yet Sunak remains calm and reassuring. One can forgive Matt Hancock for looking a bit like a deflated crisp packet at this stage: the health secretary is back at work, having succumbed to the virus (and lost half a stone, he revealed, in the process). But compare Sunak to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who performed his one-off evening briefing sounding like an automaton programmed for “Crisis Mode”. No wonder Ladbrokes now has Sunak as the hot (ding dong) favourite to be the next PM.

Sunak frequently wears a letter block bracelet that reads "dada" - the perfect accompaniment to his bespoke suits. © Leon Neal

The chancellor also lacks a politician’s superiority complex. He comes across as relatively egoless, plain-speaking but eloquent. His rise was not artless – no one becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer by mistake. Still, he does not seem ruthless: insiders say Sunak has never worked the House of Commons tea room, where MPs, journalists and Spads lurk to dish dirt and drive bargains, and as a teetotaller, he doesn’t spend much time on Westminster’s warm white wine evening scene. He was promoted, unexpectedly, from chief secretary to the Treasury to chancellor on 13 February after Sajid Javid resigned (just in time for Valentine’s Day). Talent rises to the top: a year ago, he was a junior minister, and was only elected as the MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire in 2015.

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He’s sprightly, by Whitehall standards: Sunak turns 40 next month (12 May, lest you wish to mark the date with hearts in your Filofax). He is married to Akshata Murthy – the daughter of an Indian billionaire – with whom he shares a £10 million property portfolio across the US and UK. The couple is renowned for hosting wholesome parties at their pile in north Yorkshire – with Rish, as friends call him, manning the grill – and they have two daughters, Krishna and Anoushka.

You’d definitely swipe right on the CV. Born and raised in Southampton, the eldest of three children and the son of a GP and a chemist (he’s called his “an NHS family”), Sunak is the former head boy of Winchester College, who went on to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford and graduated with a first. He worked as a junior analyst at Goldman Sachs, later attended Stanford as a Fulbright scholar (where he met Akshata), and was a hedge fund manager in a series of the capital’s most gilded funds before he became an MP. He’s now estimated to be one of the richest sitting MPs, with a fortune of around £200 million.

Still, he’s no smooth operator – in fact, the man loves Star Wars, spreadsheets and Southampton FC (again, so adorably first-year crush). And his fans love it: the standout star of the press briefings now has 61,000 followers and counting hanging on his every Instagram post. Not to mention (at least) one very active WhatsApp fan club.

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