Election 2024: This wasn't a campaign announcement. It was a death rattle.
Rishi Sunak finally gives up the ghost.
The rain poured down on him. And as it fell, you could almost see his last dreams of vindication dribble away on the ground beneath his feet.
For a brief moment before Rishi Sunak appeared outside of Downing Street, the skies cleared. That long persistent drizzle of the last few days seemed to finally let up for a moment. And there must have been a sense inside the building, a forlorn hope perhaps, that maybe today was his lucky day. Perhaps today his fortune would change.
Maybe it was the right time to call an election after all. Everything else has failed. Every other reset had collapsed. Perhaps the campaign itself would improve things. Perhaps, all other options now lost, it could provide the reset he'd dreamed of. Maybe Labour would crumble in the spotlight and he would gain a sense of verve and dynamism from having taken such a high-stakes gamble.
So Sunak emerged from the famous front door and strode over to the lectern outside. The journalists hushed. And then, as he began to speak - seemingly the very moment he opened his mouth - the rain started again. Great bulging drops of water, splattering across his suit, dripping down his shoulders. Who let him out there? Which member of his staff suggested to him that he should deliver the statement outside? Who sent him off without an umbrella? Who thought any of this was a good idea?
And then, remarkably, as if he were ignoring every element of what was happening, Sunak began to talk about his plan. He has a plan. Labour doesn't have a plan. Trust the plan. Don't go back to step one. But he was, quite literally, a man outside, in the rain, without an umbrella. He was the visual representation of someone who did not have a plan.
Then the music began. From just off Downing Street, a sound system cranked up - presumably the one carried around by the anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray. I saw him early this morning, smoking on Millbank. I did not know, as I nodded hello to him, that he would end the day ruining the prime minister’s election announcement.
Things… It came from nowhere about a minute into the statement. And there seemed a slight twitch of recognition in Sunak’s eye, a troubled thought in the depths of the mind. Can only get better... At first you couldn't work out what the tune was. And then slowly it became clear. The sound system got louder. Ah yes, you realised. Of course. Things can only get, can only get... A wince. A hesitancy to his speech. That tell-tale lack of conviction that emerges when you have to try to make yourselves heard above the noise. Things can only get better.
Soon enough, you could barely Sunak above it. He tried to say something about Putin, something about the threat of China, but he could barely be discerned above the music of his enemies. And still the rain splattered down. Drop drop drop. And in that moment you could feel it all collapsing in on him. Some great designation from on high that he was failing, that he failed, that he was a failure. That this sodden, half-wrecked moment was his final gasp and it had collapsed before it ever even really started. Then finally, he turned around to walk back inside, and you could see that his suit was soaked through. Defeated. Undone.
He left the pack of journalists behind him, all of them also wet and cold. Baffled. Many will have booked holidays for June or July, thinking they were safe. Presuming the election would be in autumn. They'll be no thanks from them for what took place today.
Back in the Commons tearooms, his own MPs were aghast. Suddenly it was here. They knew the day would come. They knew that eventually it would arrive. Well now that day was upon them, and irrational as it was, they blamed him for it. The void beckoned. It ushered them in, and from its depths you could hear terrible lament of lost souls.
Throughout the afternoon, the most inane blabber, the distinct scratching sound of panic and despair. "Letters are going in calling for a no confidence vote in Rishi Sunak after reports of an imminent general election announcement," Newsnight's Nicholas Watts reported, citing a Tory rebel source. And suddenly you could imagine a perfect outcome - the threshold for a leadership contest being reached the moment he called an election. But no, that's surely too preposterous, even for this timeline. Too insane. Instead, it was all trundle on to its predictable conclusion.
What hope is there for Sunak now? What distant hint of possibility might light the kindle in his heart, keep him warm and dry from the rain?
There's nothing. All his promises are turned to dust. His five pledges from last year are merely a stick with which to beat him. The fact today's inflation news is considered a springboard for the campaign is embarrassing in and of itself. He isn't even responsible for that - the Bank of England is. And just because inflation is slowing makes no immediate real-world difference to people when they visit the supermarket. No leader with viable electoral aspirations bases a campaign on the announcement of improvement rather than its manifestation.
The economy is dead on its arse. We sometimes briefly crawl out of recession, only to sit stagnating in a world of decay. Debt is not falling in any meaningful way. The NHS is in a state of perennial crisis. The boats still come. He might not even get the chance to send his one solitary plane to Rwanda given the timetable he has selected. All of it was for nothing.
The Labour lead is 27% with YouGov at the top of the range and 17% with Savanata at the bottom. Either is enough to finish him. A poll showing his net personal favourability rating today put him on -51. No-one in their right mind would take that punt. Or rather: no-one with any hope would take it. And therein lies the heart of it.
At some point there was a meeting. He looked at what was coming down the track - Rwanda flights, GDP, debt, interest rates, inflation, taxes. And he figured it would never look better for him than it did today. That this, terrible as it is, is as good as it gets.
More than anything, it is an admission of defeat. A concession. A recognition of the bleak reality he faces.
All day in Westminster it felt terribly strange. There was this cloak of unreality over events, as people checked their phones and muttered sceptically, then rechecked and checked again as the rumours hardened. But surely not, they thought. Surely not now. Not today. Why on earth would he do that?
The reason it seemed strange was because this was not a normal election announcement. It wasn't based on hope, but the precise opposite of it. It wasn't based on strategy, but its collapse. It was the behaviour of a man who had given up.
It's never looked like death before. The announcement of a general election has never sounded like the croak of a dying animal as it passes to the other side. But that's what it was. This wasn't the start of an election. It was the death rattle of a party.
Things… can only get wetter, can only get wetter….
I felt this weird sense of excitement… but also a sudden sense of dread. What if we vote the (clearly) wrong way again? What if Britain does a Britain? I’m scared, Ian.