How was he involved? How did he help this situation?

The US also did it over the weekend. Kinda had to be done.

> HSBC on Monday averted a crisis in Britain’s tech sector by rescuing Silicon Valley Bank’s UK arm, a dramatic fire sale concluded after all-night talks led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Bank of England.

> A sale of SVB UK, which has 3,300 UK clients, including start-ups, venture-backed companies and funds, was the preferred choice of chancellor Jeremy Hunt, avoiding a big government intervention to protect depositors.

source: https://www.ft.com/content/216b193d-62b3-4e5e-8f67-e8eb3d96e...

Sunak was apparently very hands on according to the FT.

He has a finance background

Yes, he was doing books for his parents' pharmacy.

Whatever you think of the bloke, there's a bit more to his CV than that.

Yeah, he tripped and threw the curry he was trying to serve over my wife's shoes. It's all she talks about whenever she sees him on TV.

Is that when he was working at Indian restaurant "for fun"?

Do we? His style is more school-boy debate club than anything else. It doesn't matter what the reality is, so long as you get some zingers in.

It is really sad to see comment threads like this that devolve into shallow and petty dismissals devoid of any actual content or substance!

Fair point, so I will flesh this out a bit. The typical pattern we see in PMQs every week is this:

  1. Valid concern from the opposition

  2. Rishi ignores the concern

  3. Rishi says something about "the member from Islington North"

  4. Jeering from the back benches (both sides)

  5. Opposition moves on to another topic

Or perhaps this:

  1. Government back-bencher asks "Does the PM agree that we are doing a fantastic job on X?"

  2. Rishi agrees

  3. Rishi uses the time to grandstand about some other unrelated accomplishment

Perhaps this is more a criticism of the system than Rishi?

Still, I see no evidence that he is using his position of power to improve on this.

I don't know about the UK parliament, but the Canadian parliament is quite similar in political structure and the "debates" at the chamber are a bit of a clown show as well. Just someone doing a speech and zingers, the same side applaud, the other side boos, and it goes on and on for a few hours. If the population actually saw what was happening over there, they wouldn't be too impressed. The medias tend to only feature a couple questions and a couple (empty) answers, but they typically avoid showing us the circus.

But this has been like that forever, not very specific to any party or any PM.

People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards shouldn't watch any of them being made. -- Peter Gutmann

So the Canadian parliament isn't directly elected by the people, like the British one? That's what everyone says is the difference. Seems to make the parliament members more "hype men" than lawmakers.

I kinda hate PMQs but I also don’t think it’s very relevant. In particular, the style doesn’t depend much on who is prime minister. If the jeering and cheering can be kept to an hour a week and most everything else is terribly dry, that feels ok to me. I think it’s important to judge people based on what they do that matters and not the things they do that don’t matter but are easy to point out and deride.

PMQs is supposed to be theatre

the real work happens in the boring debates and committees which aren't all over the press

This is just what PMQs are. It's part of the system and not any parliament member specifically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLSq1h7AvkE

I've seen him a few times on PMQs and I thought this comment was a reasonable description

Sunak was as supportive as anyone of the lockdowns and other hysterical COVID madness that lead to economic turmoil that precipitated this situation in the first place.

Supporting his father in law comes first.