Rishi Sunak- our maths teacher

 Rishi Sunak - our maths teacher.

You must remember them surely. They were the ones who drummed mathematics into your head with such passionate insistence that by the end of the lessons and double lessons you felt emotionally exhausted, on the point of desperation, questioning your sanity and just fed up. Maths lessons at school were quite the most soul destroying experience you'd ever been subjected to, agony and purgatory in one morning or afternoon. It was the most horribly futile exercise, utterly demoralising and a complete waste of time.

And yet over the weekend our latest Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has gone out of his way to remind us of our delicate sensibilities, our hackles raised, annoyance and exasperation being the overriding emotions. The latest from 10 Downing Street headquarters is that Sunak is convinced that if the kids of today knuckled down to the task, rolled up their shirt sleeves and got stuck into Algebra, Logarithms and Algorithms, Pythagoras Theorem and, seemingly complicated mathematical equations, then their lives would be considerably enriched and the benefits would be felt almost immediately.

For all the world, Sunak does come across quite favourably as a man and a highly intelligent individual with natural gifts as an eloquent speaker on most subjects. After the uniquely buffoonish Boris Johnson- which is clearly open to debate and not necessarily everybody's point of view - Sunak is an intellectual giant with much more commonsense and intelligence than Johnson ever had but this is also open to interpretation. Then there was Liz Truss, a decent and well educated woman but a woman who made the wrong decisions at the wrong time and suffered the consequences. We all know what happened to her and that's history.

But the juxtaposition of Johnson and Sunak at the head of Johnson's tenure as Prime Minister was always fascinating and the relationship between the two still polarises Britain whenever we dwell on the past. Johnson was the one who, after only a couple of months after being elected as Prime Minister, was suddenly thrown into the deep end and found himself floundering in raging waters before sinking horribly into an embarrassed oblivion when Covid 19 and its emotional aftermath just swallowed him up.

Now Sunak is in charge at No. 10 Downing Street and all the forces of evil are beginning to conspire against him. He believes, quite rightly or wrongly depending on your point of view that school students should be compelled to take mathematics until that crucial moment when boredom sets in. But hold on, the great academic minds will tell you that the importance of a good, rounded education can never be underestimated and maths is an integral part of that process.

But our Mr Sunak has now suggested that angles, geometry, advanced maths, long division, rows upon rows of figures should dominate our thinking as we grow into adolescence. In fact maths should be made compulsory and he does have a valid point. However, what happens when you find yourself huddled over a book with bewildering numbers and questions that take an age to figure out. Maybe the revisionists are entitled to ask why maths is so absolutely essential.

The professions of accountancy, banking and insurance are of course hugely respected but for somebody who detested sums, tables and graphs, maths represented a world of nightmares and horrific dreams. You can still see your head buried in a state of almost chronic despair, staring vacantly into a book that was just unintelligible and unfathomable. You may just as well have been on some remote desert island or, dare you say it, trying your utmost to sort through the complexities of another language.

Now we know that some of the great economists and maths professors would insist that Sunak is absolutely right but since when did we have to do something that was against our better judgment?  Why should maths be compulsory since there are those who wanted nothing to do with the subject. And therein lies the moral dilemma. Do we take careful note of Sunak's apparently quite patronising preaching or just ignore him as some great academic whose father is a doctor?

We are at the start of a significant year for the Government. This could go either way for the Tories. They have now been in power for thirteen years which as somebody once said memorably and clearly is a long time in politics. The fact is that it isn't because it's a week but that's immaterial. 2023 has got a great deal going for it insomuch as that it marks the beginning of a new era in royal circles. King Charles the third will have his coronation in May and we'll all be proud and respectable citizens.

For Rishi Sunak there lies the enticing prospect of repairing a damaged economy, wading his way through a fuel and electricity crisis this winter. And oh yes there's the matter of a never ending war in Ukraine at the moment which probably fills him with dread. But Sunak knew that was part of the taxing job description so there can be no room for complacency there.

Anyway it's time to settle back in our comforting sofas or spend huge quantities of time on Facebook and Twitter, tapping on your Tablet, e-mailing ad infinitum before surfing as many Internet sites as you can possibly visit. But Rishi Sunak would like us all to go back to school, college or university, swot studiously on the subject of mathematics, get loads of qualifications and then become Chancellor of the Exchequer overnight. Just like that.

 And before you go don't forget to do your homework tonight because you'll be spending all day being tested in the hope that eventually you'll just walk into 11 Downing Street. You've got two hours now so turn over your paper and make sure you pass with flying colours. If you fail you'll be forced to do detention and write a thousand lines. Rishi is watching you Ladies and Gentlemen.