Rishi Sunak insists he's the Tory contender to fix problems facing UK

If you're facing an emergency who do you want to come to your aid?

Is it the clever guy who tells you you can trust him because, after all, he did a pretty good job in the last emergency?

The guy who says you have to get used to the idea that you can't have your hopes and dreams - not now at least?

Or do you pick the woman who insists that there's no need to be so gloomy? Who promises she can deliver the future you've craved for so long?

That, in a nutshell, is the choice Rishi Sunak is presenting to the Conservative members who get to choose our next prime minister.

It is also the reason that he has gone from being the favourite to - in his own words - the underdog.

Mr Sunak has told the 160,000 or so Conservative members that will choose our next prime minister that the country faces not one, but a whole series of emergencies.

So, that is what I explored with him starting with the soaring price of energy.

Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, has called on Mr Sunak to pledge to match the £15bn he pledged as chancellor to help people with their bills before they soared again.

Mr Lewis is going to be disappointed.

Mr Sunak says he will give more help to pensioners and to those on benefits. But he'll only spend "a few billions".

This means that millions of ordinary families will have to pay hundreds of pounds a year extra without additional help.

He was very keen to point out that his opponent Liz Truss - who has still not come up with a date on which she will be interviewed - has made promises of tax cuts that will do nothing for the old or the poor.

Instead, he says it will give people on big salaries like hers a big handout of over £1,000 whilst folk on low wages get just a few quid.

One reason, perhaps, for Mr Sunak's reluctance to promise to spend more and to spell out his plans in detail is because he'd then have to put a price on them and explain where the many billions required would come from.

He can't say borrowing because he's condemned his main rival, Ms Truss, for mortgaging the futures of our children and grandchildren with her promise to borrow more to pay for tax cuts.

He says the money will come from efficiency savings. But the figures he needs to find would dwarf the savings that he needs to raise £1bn to spend on arms for Ukraine.

When it comes to another emergency - the huge backlog in the NHS - Mr Sunak is not promising to spend more.

This is despite warnings from those running NHS services that inflation will mean that they may have to employ fewer employees, build fewer hospitals or carry out fewer operations

Two-thirds of Tory members in a recent poll said they thought the health device had enough money already.

He has identified the control of our borders as another emergency, and I asked him about that Brexit promise that Britain would take control of its borders.

I also asked him: Is the promise made repeatedly by the Conservatives to cut net migration - the difference between the number coming into the country and the number leaving it - now dead?

The figure, about 240,000, is now well over double that target.

Mr Sunak appears not to mind providing people come here legally if their skills are needed.

He cares much more about illegal crossings of the channel even though the numbers doing that are much much lower.

Perhaps Rishi Sunak's biggest problem is that he is not Boris Johnson.

Many in his party wish that the ballot paper gave them the option to keep Mr Johnson in Number 10.

I asked Mr Sunak whether Mr Johnson was unfit to stay in office. It's a question he's tried to avoid up until now speaking in code about the prime minister being "on the wrong side of an ethical issue".

He said that that was why he'd resigned from the cabinet and declining trust in the standards in public life did itself constitute another emergency.

So, is Mr Sunak like the plumber who comes to fix your broken boiler and tells you: "It's worse than you think, it'll cost you a lot more and things are really bad?" when all people want is someone who says "yes, I can fix it?"

Is he, in Boris Johnson's words, a gloomster and not a booster?

No, he insisted, when I put that to him, I'm the guy you can trust to put things right.

Even though he keeps being told he is going to lose, he looks like a man who still believes there's an argument worth having.