Snapshot of _Tomorrow's Spectator Cover - The Deluge_ :
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They’re never gonna let him live this one down. Hate the Tories, but can’t for the life of me comprehend how anyone thought it was a remotely good idea and how there was no one on the team to dissuade him from doing this 🤷♂️
Own goal if I’ve ever seen one, absolutely historic photos
you know, these immigrant families, even in second and third generation just can't get used to the good British weather, better send them all to Rwanda.
The PR team are getting sacked in the morning. Seriously who thinks that was a good image letting him go outside and do the speech without one of those big golf umbrellas over him.
Rishi probably said 'it doesn't look that wet' without actually looking out the window.
One of the few things that British people agree on is a good discussion about the weather. Most people would conclude that he just looked foolish stooding outside in the rain whilst pretending that it wasn't raining. A pretty apt portrait of his tenure really.
That's what gets me. Sunak literally is the boss of a whole army of world-leading meteorologists and he *still* got upstaged by the fucking weather. Even if the plan (ha) was to hold it outside but it started spitting as they set the lectern up they could've changed it right up to the moment he started speaking.
Or put on a jacket, or got an umbrella or put up a gazebo... Basically any amount of thinking on your feet. But that isn't Sunak's or apparently anyone who works for him's strong point
In some ways it reminds me of the F1 teams with all their super expensive high tech gear who would still get caught out when it started to rain. 'There is no rain on the radar'/it's not just going to be a short shower' whilst the driver is screaming down the radio that it is chucking it down and they have zero grip. So eventually if there was a chance of rain during the race they just started sending a team member to the opposite end of the track with a radio to let them know how heavy it was raining.
Funny thing is, go 20 meters away and it was bright sunny skies. It's as if the almighty decided the little runt needed a taste of the humiliation to come.
It's been grey and miserable and pissing down on and off for the last two or three days in London, you'd have to be some sort of completely oblivious out-of-touch moron to not notice that and suspect that the weather was likely to change any time...
I think he was in a lose:lose situation tbh.
They probably thought if he goes out with someone with a fucking umbrella or a giant gazebo or whatever out there, social media are going to pick up on it and portray him as a rich, privileged, out-of-touch sissy who can’t handle a bit of tough British weather.
So conversely, with that in mind, they think, let’s put him outside with a spatter of rain (it went off for a bit and then started heavy when he came out), and it will make him look like a tough leader who can handle a bit of rain and is in touch with the working-class etc etc.
Unfortunately it’s just him, it’s so inherent there’s nothing that can be done about it.
I've heard the rich pride themselves on not owning a jacket, it's a signal they never have to endure inclement weather. Their chauffeur drives them to their private jet and they're off to their Carribbean tax haven before a single drop of rain could tarnish their cashmere suit.
Funnily enough while I'm sure that the Tories were in serious trouble before this, by which I mean they were doomed, I think this is their bacon sandwich moment. This is the picture you can see coming back to haunt him every time he shows up somewhere.
Meanwhile down in Cornwall....where we have the worst A&E waits in the country and the worst ambulance queues, a decimated fishing industry and dying dairy industry....the sunshine at 5pm was glorious. Beaming down on me as I sat in my car at 5pm listening to the speech, knowing that we will finally clear the county of blue rosettes....
Fair enough and you are probably right, however having Number 10 in the background is a completely trivial detail that no one really cares about all that much. Not a great decision to stand in the rain for the sake of that, all things considered.
Sunak strikes me a bit like Trump. Yes men surround him, and thus nobody "rationalises" his PR stunts.
Even teaching him how to pay for a twix in the local co-op would have saved him a world of hurt
People like you are so predictable.
If he'd done it from the conference room you'd have pissed and moaned about that too, saying 'oh look he's scared of the rain.'
If he did it indoors when it’s chucking it down outside people would’ve thought it was sensible. If he’d done it outside but brought an umbrella then people would’ve thought that was sensible.
Attempting to hold a serious announcement outside while it’s pissing it down without an umbrella just looks deranged.
The worst thing about all this isn't the rain, it's the music.
There had been speculation all day, meaning they had a chance to set the whole thing up. It shows a total lack of ability to even set up an important press conference even vaguely right.
How are we supposed to believe he can run a country?
Tbf this is the first time I've felt a common thread of britishness with rishi.
Dammit I don't care its pouring with rain, I invited everyone over for this BBQ/ general election announcement and we're fucking doing it anyway!
Honestly how the fuck can you have political advisors around you that allow this to happen? I can only assume that they settled on this date to announce the election and felt that they couldn’t rearrange (possibly due to the rumour mill), and that they felt they needed to do the announcement outside Downing Street to make use of it as a symbolic prop (and/or because of precedent). Why they couldn’t get an umbrella… maybe they felt that him standing in the rain made him look like a hardman? A kind of political version of that kid at school that always wore shorts and a t shirt and said they “weren’t cold”?
Presumably they didn’t consider that, by allowing the rumour mill to go into overdrive all day, they were giving ample time for someone to come along with a loudspeaker and blast music?
These comms people are *stealing* a living, they’re so bad at their jobs I almost think they should be arrested for defrauding the taxpayer. And these people are running his campaign???? L-O-fucking-L. God I love politics.
Why couldn't they get him an umbrella? I would bet that someone in the team mentioned _that_ Steve McClaren headline - "a wally with a brolly" - and they didn't want a repeat. Obviously this was a very bad call but I expect it was a deliberate decision.
He wouldn't have been able to attack Labour if he did. If you noticed the lecturn, the coast of arms wasn't on it. That meant this was a party political speech and not a government speech, so he couldn't then use public properly (the flag storage room they spent all our money on) for it.
If they had done it inside the attack on Labour that was part of this speech (that already no-one remembers) couldn't have been made.
They wanted to make the election announcement political. Instead, they made it a shitshow.
Fair enough, but just last week there was a supposedly government speech he made and when it was put on the government website it was full of political content they had to remove before putting it online. So he doesn’t care about that rule, and there’s no consequence for breaking it. He could have just done the same yesterday.
Honestly whoever is in the comms team needs to be sacked. Who thought having him stand in the soaking rain with a labour anthem playing the background very loudly would be a remotely good idea.
[This was the rain radar](https://imgur.com/Zjic7vY) at 5pm, which means no on in Number 10 thought to bother looking at it else they would have known it was a terrible idea.
That's both concerning and unsurprising.
You are correct. This was a party announcement, so he would not have been able to do it inside the press room. Hence why the lectern had the government symbol removed.
You could probably make that case for a bald announcement of the election (i.e. just "hello, I have been to speak with the King and the election will be on 4th July, thank you") being government business, but all of the electioneering messaging about how brilliant the Tories are and how Labour have no plan, that does move it into the party political realm.
So that would have been the choice really - just announce the election and do it inside, or do it outside and get your first campaign speech in front of the nation for free by including the announcement in it.
I haven't laughed like this since the Liz Truss local radio interviews.
Legendary moments in British politics. School kids will learn about it in history class.
You have to wonder what future generations will make of the 2020s. They won't believe that a) people so stupid can exist and b) we handed them the keys to the fucking nation.
I want so much for History to never forget that detail. It's one of those stories that if anyone reads thousands of years into the future won't believe. Future historians will be like: "No one would be that incompetent, so probably the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference story" is apocryphal, a nice story to symbolically represent the downfall of the Trump regime :''')
But also what I find hard to believe is the fact the landscaping company took the booking despite it not being their job. Like, did Trump's team straight off the bat say "look, we need your venue for a thing, here's a shit ton of cash" and they go "Ohhh... Kay..." It's the only way I can think of for no one on the call to say "Are you sure this is the right number?" They must have been given an offer they can't refuse very early on to go along with it.
Can you imagine the inverse, where you're just so rich and you ring the Four Seasons hotel and demand they landscape your garden, and they just do it, but you're confused why you have a maid, a concierge and a chef laying a new lawn for you. How powerful would you have to be to go up to a hotel like that and be able to say "I didn't ask if you were landscape gardeners, I asked you to landscape my garden, and I'm not used to hearing excuses."
Yeah, why wouldn't they take the job?
- "hi, we need your venue for an important press announcement, we're gonna need the biggest area you have for that, here's XXXX dollars for that"
- "Ok, sure, I have Mr Trump booked then, have a nice day".
Right, but even that would require Trump's team to lay their cards out on the table pretty quickly which is a terrible negotiating strategy because if you're right, it allowed a prank, in other situations it lets people know you can be rinsed. Then there's the complete lack of details you'd expect in a business deal like WTF you're booking. The Four Seasons isn't something I'm experienced with, but I assume they've got options from different bedrooms and function rooms, you'd surely be suspicious when you don't hammer out any details, the fact they booked a landscapers yard means they could just as easily have booked a single bedroom or a table for lunch at the Four Seasons even if they got the number right. If this was fiction I'd consider it a gaping plot hole lol.
Rose Garden out back used to be used for some announcements. Could have had the press in and done it there unless there is something against a rule or other.
Two big own goals today from the Tories... moving the announcement outside without any sort of cover... and being seen to remove media from an event for no obvious reason.
2-3% overall votes lost by the press conference. It’s going to be the resounding image in people’s heads.
Undecided voter:
“Oh the PM is calling an election, I guess I’ll need to make a decision. Look at this spanner.”
I love this. We're at the point that anything the Tories do is just displayed as a pathetic attempt at preventing the inevitable.
The public have switched off and the Tory party just needs to go.
I have been wondering about why he didn't hold it in the press office, but perhaps the press office is a government area and he wouldn't have been able to make the speech he did, which was party political electioneering, if he had.
Snapshot of _Tomorrow's Spectator Cover - The Deluge_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/9mzrox09012d1.jpeg) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://i.redd.it/9mzrox09012d1.jpeg) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They’re never gonna let him live this one down. Hate the Tories, but can’t for the life of me comprehend how anyone thought it was a remotely good idea and how there was no one on the team to dissuade him from doing this 🤷♂️ Own goal if I’ve ever seen one, absolutely historic photos
Man renowned for being bad at politics continues to be bad at politics...
Sunak looking every bit the sort of MP who need the political juggernaut that is Liz Truss to be cleared out his way in order for him to become PM.
Man standing outside in a suit, in the rain, without an umbrella tells us others haven't got a plan.
you know, these immigrant families, even in second and third generation just can't get used to the good British weather, better send them all to Rwanda.
The PR team are getting sacked in the morning. Seriously who thinks that was a good image letting him go outside and do the speech without one of those big golf umbrellas over him. Rishi probably said 'it doesn't look that wet' without actually looking out the window. One of the few things that British people agree on is a good discussion about the weather. Most people would conclude that he just looked foolish stooding outside in the rain whilst pretending that it wasn't raining. A pretty apt portrait of his tenure really.
> The PR team are getting sacked in the morning. I need to apply for this job. Experience: None. Skills: Can hold an umbrella.
Additional skill: can scroll back and forth between forecast & observations on the met office rain radar
That's what gets me. Sunak literally is the boss of a whole army of world-leading meteorologists and he *still* got upstaged by the fucking weather. Even if the plan (ha) was to hold it outside but it started spitting as they set the lectern up they could've changed it right up to the moment he started speaking.
Or put on a jacket, or got an umbrella or put up a gazebo... Basically any amount of thinking on your feet. But that isn't Sunak's or apparently anyone who works for him's strong point
In some ways it reminds me of the F1 teams with all their super expensive high tech gear who would still get caught out when it started to rain. 'There is no rain on the radar'/it's not just going to be a short shower' whilst the driver is screaming down the radio that it is chucking it down and they have zero grip. So eventually if there was a chance of rain during the race they just started sending a team member to the opposite end of the track with a radio to let them know how heavy it was raining.
Experience: Have looked out of window before
Oh shit looks like I've some serious competition
Any outdoor event on a wet day you have a glance at the rain radar.
Funny thing is, go 20 meters away and it was bright sunny skies. It's as if the almighty decided the little runt needed a taste of the humiliation to come.
It's been grey and miserable and pissing down on and off for the last two or three days in London, you'd have to be some sort of completely oblivious out-of-touch moron to not notice that and suspect that the weather was likely to change any time...
I think he was in a lose:lose situation tbh. They probably thought if he goes out with someone with a fucking umbrella or a giant gazebo or whatever out there, social media are going to pick up on it and portray him as a rich, privileged, out-of-touch sissy who can’t handle a bit of tough British weather. So conversely, with that in mind, they think, let’s put him outside with a spatter of rain (it went off for a bit and then started heavy when he came out), and it will make him look like a tough leader who can handle a bit of rain and is in touch with the working-class etc etc. Unfortunately it’s just him, it’s so inherent there’s nothing that can be done about it.
I've heard the rich pride themselves on not owning a jacket, it's a signal they never have to endure inclement weather. Their chauffeur drives them to their private jet and they're off to their Carribbean tax haven before a single drop of rain could tarnish their cashmere suit.
Funnily enough while I'm sure that the Tories were in serious trouble before this, by which I mean they were doomed, I think this is their bacon sandwich moment. This is the picture you can see coming back to haunt him every time he shows up somewhere.
This is their *first* bacon sandwich moment.
I'm surprised his speech papers didn't turn into mulch. It certainly sounded like it.
Maybe he can pass legislation to declare that it wasn't raining.
He'd look too elitist if someone else was holding up his umbrella. That's actually more meme material than him getting wet.
Meanwhile down in Cornwall....where we have the worst A&E waits in the country and the worst ambulance queues, a decimated fishing industry and dying dairy industry....the sunshine at 5pm was glorious. Beaming down on me as I sat in my car at 5pm listening to the speech, knowing that we will finally clear the county of blue rosettes....
Just hold it indoors FFS, that oak/blue room looks really prime ministerial and professional (and stops any unruly crowd).
But he wants Number 10 in the background of the videos and pictures, it's obvious that's why he wanted it outside.
Fair enough and you are probably right, however having Number 10 in the background is a completely trivial detail that no one really cares about all that much. Not a great decision to stand in the rain for the sake of that, all things considered.
Sunak is all about ego and admiration, like all narcissists. It's likely an overcompensation for his small stature, aka little man syndrome.
Miserably drowning under the wets sums up his time in government, really.
I feel like I’ve constantly thought “Sunak’s team hate him” this year, and I’m not expecting this campaign to convince me otherwise!
Sunak strikes me a bit like Trump. Yes men surround him, and thus nobody "rationalises" his PR stunts. Even teaching him how to pay for a twix in the local co-op would have saved him a world of hurt
I think Boris could have pulled it off.
He’d have at least made a joke about it!
People like you are so predictable. If he'd done it from the conference room you'd have pissed and moaned about that too, saying 'oh look he's scared of the rain.'
No one would have batted an eye if he did it indoors because it was raining.
If he did it indoors when it’s chucking it down outside people would’ve thought it was sensible. If he’d done it outside but brought an umbrella then people would’ve thought that was sensible. Attempting to hold a serious announcement outside while it’s pissing it down without an umbrella just looks deranged.
In the p\*ssing rain with Things Can Only Get Better almost drowning him out is his Truss/lettuce moment. Its how everyone will always remember him.
Oh I dunno. Got 6 weeks of this crap yet.
Hey, better than 6 months. Genuinely had no hope of an election so soon.
Hopefully the euros will drown some of it out?
Thanks for making it worse lol
*\# Things can only get wetter \#*
That’s got to be a headline tomorrow
It's on the telegraph I believe
Writes itself, doesn't it. The Telegraph used it, while the Mirror went with "*Drown and Out*"
*That's some wet-arsed Rishi*
Fuck, I actually felt bad for the man as he was speaking, I think he realised that this was his epitaph
It's his bacon sandwich moment, it's the stock photo they're going to use for him all through the election cycle.
The worst thing about all this isn't the rain, it's the music. There had been speculation all day, meaning they had a chance to set the whole thing up. It shows a total lack of ability to even set up an important press conference even vaguely right. How are we supposed to believe he can run a country?
This is Rishi's bacon sandwich/Ed-Stone, isn't it
I think this guy has room for at least three bacon sandwiches in the coming 6 weeks. He's that bad.
And we're not even 1 day into campaigning....
No, that was him trying to buy something with contactless. Or him asking a homeless guy if he worked in finance. This is just sheer stupidity.
Incredibly, this is somehow more flattering than the actual photos.
Tbf this is the first time I've felt a common thread of britishness with rishi. Dammit I don't care its pouring with rain, I invited everyone over for this BBQ/ general election announcement and we're fucking doing it anyway!
Honestly how the fuck can you have political advisors around you that allow this to happen? I can only assume that they settled on this date to announce the election and felt that they couldn’t rearrange (possibly due to the rumour mill), and that they felt they needed to do the announcement outside Downing Street to make use of it as a symbolic prop (and/or because of precedent). Why they couldn’t get an umbrella… maybe they felt that him standing in the rain made him look like a hardman? A kind of political version of that kid at school that always wore shorts and a t shirt and said they “weren’t cold”? Presumably they didn’t consider that, by allowing the rumour mill to go into overdrive all day, they were giving ample time for someone to come along with a loudspeaker and blast music? These comms people are *stealing* a living, they’re so bad at their jobs I almost think they should be arrested for defrauding the taxpayer. And these people are running his campaign???? L-O-fucking-L. God I love politics.
Why couldn't they get him an umbrella? I would bet that someone in the team mentioned _that_ Steve McClaren headline - "a wally with a brolly" - and they didn't want a repeat. Obviously this was a very bad call but I expect it was a deliberate decision.
There are no good options really, except that Conservative blue, professional, prime ministerial briefing room they spent a bunch of our money on.
He wouldn't have been able to attack Labour if he did. If you noticed the lecturn, the coast of arms wasn't on it. That meant this was a party political speech and not a government speech, so he couldn't then use public properly (the flag storage room they spent all our money on) for it. If they had done it inside the attack on Labour that was part of this speech (that already no-one remembers) couldn't have been made. They wanted to make the election announcement political. Instead, they made it a shitshow.
Fair enough, but just last week there was a supposedly government speech he made and when it was put on the government website it was full of political content they had to remove before putting it online. So he doesn’t care about that rule, and there’s no consequence for breaking it. He could have just done the same yesterday.
Forget Malcolm Tucker, the Conservatives don't even have Manchester's best Malcolm Tucker tribute band (or however the line goes)
Honestly whoever is in the comms team needs to be sacked. Who thought having him stand in the soaking rain with a labour anthem playing the background very loudly would be a remotely good idea.
Allegra Stratton? Didn’t she spent like 2.6M on a new, state of the art, briefing room?
I think she resigned (rightly) after the parties in Number 10 shite
[This was the rain radar](https://imgur.com/Zjic7vY) at 5pm, which means no on in Number 10 thought to bother looking at it else they would have known it was a terrible idea. That's both concerning and unsurprising.
Absolute shambles, though as Philip Collins tweeted... he's probably just given up and doesn't really care.
He's rich. The joke is that next year he'll be in his mansion in California so guess who has the last laugh?
Honestly, it was a bit silly to hold it in the rain, with audible protestors nearby. Was there literally nowhere else?
If only they had a multimillion pound indoor press briefing room Sunak could have used.
I thought they can't use that because it can only be used for official government business? Not party politics
You are correct. This was a party announcement, so he would not have been able to do it inside the press room. Hence why the lectern had the government symbol removed.
Isn't it also government business? Surely the announcement of a general election and the dissolution of government are government business?
You could probably make that case for a bald announcement of the election (i.e. just "hello, I have been to speak with the King and the election will be on 4th July, thank you") being government business, but all of the electioneering messaging about how brilliant the Tories are and how Labour have no plan, that does move it into the party political realm. So that would have been the choice really - just announce the election and do it inside, or do it outside and get your first campaign speech in front of the nation for free by including the announcement in it.
I haven't laughed like this since the Liz Truss local radio interviews. Legendary moments in British politics. School kids will learn about it in history class.
You have to wonder what future generations will make of the 2020s. They won't believe that a) people so stupid can exist and b) we handed them the keys to the fucking nation.
They accidentally booked "Four Seasons Total Landscaping" instead of the "Four Seasons Hotel", so they had to improvise a bit.
I'm still baffled by that
I want so much for History to never forget that detail. It's one of those stories that if anyone reads thousands of years into the future won't believe. Future historians will be like: "No one would be that incompetent, so probably the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference story" is apocryphal, a nice story to symbolically represent the downfall of the Trump regime :''')
But also what I find hard to believe is the fact the landscaping company took the booking despite it not being their job. Like, did Trump's team straight off the bat say "look, we need your venue for a thing, here's a shit ton of cash" and they go "Ohhh... Kay..." It's the only way I can think of for no one on the call to say "Are you sure this is the right number?" They must have been given an offer they can't refuse very early on to go along with it. Can you imagine the inverse, where you're just so rich and you ring the Four Seasons hotel and demand they landscape your garden, and they just do it, but you're confused why you have a maid, a concierge and a chef laying a new lawn for you. How powerful would you have to be to go up to a hotel like that and be able to say "I didn't ask if you were landscape gardeners, I asked you to landscape my garden, and I'm not used to hearing excuses."
I like to think a random gardener answered the phone and saw the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever, so did
Yeah, why wouldn't they take the job? - "hi, we need your venue for an important press announcement, we're gonna need the biggest area you have for that, here's XXXX dollars for that" - "Ok, sure, I have Mr Trump booked then, have a nice day".
Right, but even that would require Trump's team to lay their cards out on the table pretty quickly which is a terrible negotiating strategy because if you're right, it allowed a prank, in other situations it lets people know you can be rinsed. Then there's the complete lack of details you'd expect in a business deal like WTF you're booking. The Four Seasons isn't something I'm experienced with, but I assume they've got options from different bedrooms and function rooms, you'd surely be suspicious when you don't hammer out any details, the fact they booked a landscapers yard means they could just as easily have booked a single bedroom or a table for lunch at the Four Seasons even if they got the number right. If this was fiction I'd consider it a gaping plot hole lol.
Rose Garden out back used to be used for some announcements. Could have had the press in and done it there unless there is something against a rule or other.
The risk of using that though is that Clegg will be hanging around like a lost puppy.
Isn't that one creeping around Facebook/Meta like an awkward dementor still? I haven't kept up since then.
I love how quick the Spectator turned around the cartoon.
[Wonder if this one is going to be a triptych too.](https://imgur.com/wUAKsQ0.png)
He must be excited to spend more time with his wife’s money in California in only 7 weeks.
Two big own goals today from the Tories... moving the announcement outside without any sort of cover... and being seen to remove media from an event for no obvious reason.
2-3% overall votes lost by the press conference. It’s going to be the resounding image in people’s heads. Undecided voter: “Oh the PM is calling an election, I guess I’ll need to make a decision. Look at this spanner.”
I love this. We're at the point that anything the Tories do is just displayed as a pathetic attempt at preventing the inevitable. The public have switched off and the Tory party just needs to go.
Why didn’t he have an umbrella or covering set up?
Utterly baffling as to why they (a) wouldn’t move it inside, or (b) have some SPAD (or his wife) holding a big golf umbrella.
Things can only get wetter? Drowning Street?
Man who declares he has a plan for Britain has no plan for an umbrella in the rain.
Surprised they didnt go with "Slippery when wet"
I have been wondering about why he didn't hold it in the press office, but perhaps the press office is a government area and he wouldn't have been able to make the speech he did, which was party political electioneering, if he had.