Here comes the rain again

the rain came plunging through the leaves as if every drop were a great leaden bead.

We’ve known for ages that there would be a General Election this year. There has to be, as the five years since Boris Johnson’s triumphant ‘Get Brexit Done’ demolishing of the red wall, is up in December. We were told that it was lively to be “in the second half of the year”. Many of us took that to mean the Autumn, September maybe, or October. Lo, and behold, the second half of the year is nigh upon us, and there is an election looming. If the second six months of the year start on July 1^st, then July 4^th is “in the second half of the year”.

So, when the newsrooms were told to prepare, the political correspondents to assemble in Downing Street, the famous lectern was seen to be heaved out of the cupboard, Larry the Cat shoed out of the way, we knew what was coming.

It makes a lot of sense if I think about it. An election that most people think the incumbent is going to lose. So why would you want to ruin your MPs’ summer hols with campaigning, manifestoing and door-knocking. Far better, I’m sure the advice went, is to give the electorate their say, then sod off to the lucrative board jobs, or whatever these people have lined up for them post-government.

Obviously, there are no certainties, and Joe Public being a fickle creature, strange things have been known to happen at the ballot box. Still, enough MPs have seen the writing on the wall and are hoofing off, my own included. Can’t say I blame Greg Clarke, Michael Gove et al for doing so. When you’ve bene in government, held a seat in Cabinet and, in Gove’s case, been the almost-leader, for so long, being in opposition is going to sting. Big time.

We have five weeks of political posturing, of manifestos, of new ideas, of old ideas re-hashed to come. So far Labour’s the only ones to actually say anything about housing and building, though I suppose that too will come from the others. National Service for all 18-year-olds? A unicorn for every voter, why not? You can come up with any manner of strange ideas when you’re pretty sure you won’t have to deliver on them. See also Jeremy Corbyn and renationalising everything with a magic money tree.

If only someone in 10 Downing Street last week had had the forethought to look out of the window. Or, even, at the BBC Weather App. Poor old Rishi. He couldn’t have looked more like the beleaguered head boy of a minor private school if he’d tried. Being drowned out by both the weather and Tony Blair’s 2007 anthem, Things Can Only Get Better (says a lot about Sir Kier Starmer that this is what his supporters have to resort to, I suppose). His bespoke Savile Row suit, getting wetter and shinier by the second, until it looked like an off-the-peg at Burton, bought in haste for a defendant’s first job interview. Or court appearance.

I know that major announcements are supposed to be made outside 10 Downing Street but wouldn’t it have been so much better to use that fancy-pants media briefing room that Boris spaffed all that money on during Covid? Perhaps it’s too stuffed to the gunnels with the cast-off John Lewis furniture of Prime Ministers past, like a Westminster Room of Requirement that only appears when you really need something from it. Like an umbrella.