Drenched and deluded, Rishi Sunak’s election punt is a humiliating swan song

The ‘pathetic fallacy’, a literary device in which weather mirrors mood, has long haunted British politics. 

The day of the 1997 election, which marked the end of 18 long years of Tory rule, was gloriously sunny. Thirteen years later, as Gordon Brown left Downing Street, it was overcast.  

Neither, though, felt quite as on the nose as yesterday. 

Why anybody in Rishi Sunak’s team had believed it was sensible to give a statement outside...