Rishi Sunak mocked for cringe video of himself filling out a World Cup wall chart

Ahead of England taking on Iran and Wales playing against the USA in the World Cup on Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has thrown his support behind both teams with another flashy social media video which is raising eyebrows online.

In the 18-second clip, captioned “do us proud”, Mr Sunak can be seen flipping open his red ministerial briefcase to reveal a World Cup wallchart. Short camera cuts which look like they’ve been taken from an Edgar Wright film go on to show him drawing circles on the poster before pinning it up on a nearby wall.

“Good luck England and Wales,” text in the final frames of the video reads.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the video was branded “fake” and “cringe” by Twitter users, or compared to a segment from beloved spoof TV reporter, Alan Partridge.

And if they weren’t mocking the framing of the video, they were ridiculing the supposed insincerity of it all, with one commenter writing: “All perfectly genuine stuff. He’s quoted as saying, ‘I do hope Great Britain will win tomorrow’s soccerball match against Iran. I believe we’ll be well ahead after the first couple of overs.”

Journalist Otto English quipped: “I don’t follow football either so I recognise this.”

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Meanwhile another user known only as ‘The Secret Tory’ joked: “This doesn’t quite ring true. I’m reliably informed the only wallchart Rishi had on his wall when he was a kid was the Sunday Times Rich List.”

Ouch.

It isn’t the first time that Mr Sunak has made a football gaffe. Back in 2020 he was photographed putting on an England shirt with all the tags still on it, and in August the Southampton fan scored an own goal by telling the Manchester leadership hustings his team could get back on track by “beating [Manchester] United this weekend”.

Except Southampton were actually playing at Leicester that Saturday.

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