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A few days before Britain\u2019s Conservative Party suffered a stinging setback in local elections<\/a> on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recorded a short video to promote some good news from his government. In the eight-second clip<\/a>, Mr. Sunak poured milk from a pint bottle into a tall glass, filled with a steaming dark beverage and bearing the scribbled figure of 900 pounds on the side.<\/p>\n \u201cPay day is coming,\u201d Mr. Sunak posted, referring to the savings that an average wage earner would supposedly reap from a cut in mandatory contributions to Britain\u2019s national insurance system.<\/p>\n The mockery soon started. He\u2019d added too much milk, some said. His numbers didn\u2019t add up, said others. And why, asked one critic, would Mr. Sunak choose a pint bottle as a prop days after the opposition Labour Party\u2019s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had skewered him in Parliament as a \u201cpint-size loser?\u201d<\/p>\n However partisan her jab, loser is a label that Mr. Sunak is finding increasingly hard to shake, even among his members of his own party. In the 18 months since he replaced his failed predecessor, Liz Truss<\/a>, Mr. Sunak, 43, has lost seven special parliamentary elections and back-to-back local elections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This past week\u2019s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost about 40 percent of the 985 seats they were defending<\/a>, were merely the latest signpost on what analysts say is a road to thumping defeat in a general election. National polls show the Labour Party leading the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points<\/a>, a stubborn gap that the prime minister has been unable to close.<\/p>\n The drumbeat of bad news is casting fresh scrutiny on Mr. Sunak\u2019s leadership and the future of his party, which has been in power for 14 years but faces what could be a long stretch in the political wilderness.<\/p>\n For now, Mr. Sunak appears to have quieted talks that a cabal of Conservative lawmakers would try to oust him before the vote, which is expected in the autumn. The local results, while bad, were not as catastrophic as they could have been, averting a full-fledged panic among his colleagues. Having cycled through three prime ministers since the last election, the Tories are also running out of alternative leaders.<\/p>\n Embattled as he is, Mr. Sunak seems likely to limp to the general election as the standard-bearer of an exhausted, divided party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe broader view is that it\u2019s probably better now to let Rishi stay in his post and absorb the defeat, and for successors to position themselves for what happens after Labour wins in a landslide,\u201d said Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist at the University of Kent who has advised the Conservative Party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and an expert on the Tories, said, \u201cHe does look, to be honest, like a dead man walking.\u201d<\/p>\n Defenders of Mr. Sunak say he is a victim of global economic headwinds coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the poisoned legacy he inherited from Ms. Truss, whose sweeping tax cut plan<\/a> spooked the financial markets and tarnished Britain\u2019s reputation for fiscal probity.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s persistent inflation, high mortgage rates and a stagnant economy all predated Mr. Sunak. The inflation rate has dropped to 3.2 percent from 11.1 percent when he took office, though credit for that goes principally to the Bank of England.<\/p>\n Mr. Sunak did win praise for steadying the markets and restoring Britain\u2019s credibility after Ms. Truss. But critics said he never followed that up with a convincing strategy to recharge growth. Nor did he fulfill two other promises: to cut waiting times in the National Health Service and to stop the small boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cLiz Truss cratered the party\u2019s reputation for economic competence,\u201d Professor Bale said. \u201cBut it\u2019s also down to Sunak: He hasn\u2019t got the grip, charisma or authority that someone doing the rescue job required would have needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of that, critics said, reflects Mr. Sunak\u2019s political shortcomings. He can be querulous in media interviews, and his attempts to connect with voters are often tin eared. He drew japes after posing in a pair of Adidas Sambas<\/a>, an athletic shoe favored by celebrities like Rihanna and Harry Styles, while promoting his tax policies. \u201cSunak took an eternally cool sneaker, and ruined it for everyone,\u201d said British GQ magazine.<\/p>\n Some say that Mr. Sunak, a onetime Goldman Sachs banker whose wife, Akshata Murthy, is the daughter of an Indian technology billionaire, is simply not a relatable figure. Before he was mocked for wearing Sambas, he caught flack for wearing \u00a3490 ($616) Prada suede loafers to a construction site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, has taken aim at Mr. Sunak\u2019s preference for flying across Britain to taking the train. \u201cI\u2019m sure from the vantage point of his helicopter everything might look fine,\u201d Mr. Starmer said in Parliament, \u201cbut that\u2019s not the lived experience of those on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Sunak once posed with a \u201csmart mug\u201d for coffee, which retails for \u00a3180, on his desk \u2014 an image that stuck in the minds of those critiquing his milk-pouring video. \u201cIf anyone can afford a \u00a3900 cup of tea, it\u2019s the prime minister,\u201d the journalist Robert Hutton wrote on social media.<\/p>\n