Drowning Street nightmare will live on as soggy Sunak’s bacon butty moment

All the rain jokes, flood jokes, apres moi, le deluge jokes and Drowning Street jokes have been hung up and wrung out, so no more of that. Or, at least, not much. The abiding memory of the general election announcement will undoubtedly be of the usually immaculately turned out Rishi Sunak failing to present his best side to the cameras, the pundits and the country at large.

However, fashionistas who have previously remarked on the brevity of his trouser legs might have been forgiven for wondering if they were watching a sort of public service version of apparel shrinking in the wash.

The prime minister’s impersonation of a rather nattily attired Swamp Thing will surely be consigned to the political hall of infamy that includes Neil Kinnock falling over on Brighton beach, Ed Miliband struggling with a bacon butty and Liz Truss’s entire premiership. The numerous mis-steps featuring B Johnson Esq, from zip-wires to fridges have, of course, an entire personalised archive of their own for future public figures to access as their longsuffering media trainers attempt to teach them what not to do on the way up the greasy pole of politics.

The hapless Mr Sunak perhaps didn’t want to risk toting an umbrella for fear of looking like his last-but-one predecessor who had a bit of a tussle with just such an object during a police memorial event – while sitting next to the then Prince of Wales. If you’re going to make a twit of yourself, do it properly and in conspicuous company, I say.

In the meantime, the immediate effect of the general election announcement seemed to be that existing legislation (including the ban on teenagers buying cigarettes and the departure of planes to Rwanda) was summarily shelved for the duration of the campaign.

With the “flagship immigration policy” in mind, one can only surmise that if the PM’s speech had gone on much longer in a downpour, it may have convinced even Nigel Farage that there is something to this climate change malarkey and we could have witnessed probably the only occasion in which he might have been rather relieved to spot the arrival of a small boat.

In my younger days (my family veered from card-carrying communism to being the last of the working-class Tories), there used to be a lot of contempt for so-called “soggy liberals”.

Instead, we now all get to witness Rishi Sunak doing his impersonation of a whole new generation of Tory Wet.

And if you are old enough to remember them, you’ll know exactly how successful that approach was back in the Thatcherite heyday. Although looking back, I was amazed at how similar certain elements of political life were then, what with public spending cuts, strict monetarist policies and even mentions of austerity that didn’t include David Cameron or George Osborne.

With the former back in government (at least for the next few weeks) and even Michael Heseltine still around to stick the knife into the current generation, talk about “what goes around, comes around”. Again. And again and again, it seems.

I am no fan of Sir Keir Starmer but when he says (and, goodness knows, he’ll be saying it again and again and again over the coming weeks) that what we need above all is “change”, he might just be on to something.

When we are all so obsessed with image and appearance, it is almost inevitable that people in the public eye are frequently examined under a metaphorical (and sometimes literal) microscope.

And so it came to pass, nobbut a few weeks ago, when the Princess of Wales was taken to task for making a few nips, tucks and tweaks to a family photograph designed to reassure the intrusively curious. That fact that she subsequently felt she had to come out in public and speak about what turned out to be a cancer diagnosis left a lot of people with serious omelette-on-puss, as they say in these parts.

As an admittedly amateur photographer, however, she must currently be twitching to take the digital laser to the portrait of her good self that currently graces the cover of society bible Tatler. Painted (ironically, not from life but from photos) by artist Hannah Uzor, and explained as a symbol of “strength and dignity”, it has had, to say the least, a mixed reception.

Now, I cannot draw to save myself and my credentials as an art critic are just as non-existent so I realise how cheeky I am being when I say that, to me, it looks like nothing so much as one of those cut-out dolls that girlies of my generation used to find on the back of the Bunty…

He might have been relieved to spot the arrival of a small boat

THEY SHRINK IT’S ALL OVER: Rishi Sunak’s suit gets a soaking as he calls the general election last week.