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I was in London the day Rishi Sunak called the UK general election . Usually, elections are defined by events that occur in the course of the campaign. In this case, it was defined the moment it began.

Unbelievably, Sunak’s advisers let him make the announcement standing outside the iconic black door of 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain. As the drenched prime minister made his case for re-election, the optics could not possibly have been worse, nor the newspaper headlines they predictably inspired: “Things Can Only Get Wetter”; “Drowning Street”; “Washout”. Labour leader Keir Starmer is a democratic socialist in the tradition of Clement Attlee.



Credit: Getty Images The announcement was completely unexpected. The election did not have to be held until January, and was widely expected to be in November. With the Tories more than 20 points behind Labour, their desperate hope was that, in the next few months, there was still just enough time to turn things around.

If the public could be persuaded that the government deserved credit for recent good economic news (falling inflation, lower unemployment, easing of the cost of living), and should not take the risk of losing the hard-won gains with a Labour government, the Tories were still in with a (slender) chance. By calling the election early, Sunak squandered that opportunity. Senior Tories with whom I spoke were incandescent with rage.

One, who is among the party’s biggest donors, offered the scathing assessm.

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