Liz Truss brought a nasty shower with her to Downing Street - and then it started raining.
The new Prime Minister’s oratory has never been particularly soaring, but this afternoon’s Downing Street debut - delivered to the few damp MPs who hadn’t abandoned speech during the downpour - somewhat sank.
The PM herself managed to avoid the worst of the weather - it having slowed to a spatter while her motorcade drove round the block to wait it out.
But her snazzy new lectern - which looks a bit like a giant jenga set from a 90s fun pub - was not so lucky.
And it’s tough to convince the nation they can “ride out the storm” when you’ve just had to cover up your microphones with a black bin-liner.
Families stocking up on candles because turning the lights on will cost more than a mid-sized car will get some help, finally - and she’ll tell you all about it later in the week.
Perhaps indoors, where there’s less risk of electrocution.
There was no detail, of course - but what’s been briefed out to the media so far looks a lot like Keir Starmer’s plan, but wearing a false moustache and sunglasses, three times more expensive for some reason and with no obvious way of paying for it.
Because despite pledging a mammoth investment of public cash into business and domestic energy bills, Ms Truss still reckons this is a perfect time to take an axe to taxes.
Boris Johnson was the subject of the warmest words in a soggy speech.
Ms Truss said history would consider the ousted leader a “consequential Prime Minister” - and not, presumably, an arrogant liar who thought the rules didn’t apply to him and ended up being run out of town by his own MPs.
To her credit, the speech had a lot of the right words in it. Some of them were even in the right order.
But the delivery sank like a boat with a hole in it.
Liz Truss needed to recognise that she’s the new lead character in season six of a once-popular Netflix show - ‘The Clown’, perhaps -introduced to replace an anti-hero whose storylines had imploded under their own ludicrousness.
To get the popularity bump she and the Tories so badly need, she needed it to be something consequential. To rise to the moment and reassure a roughed-up nation that it might, just, be alright after all.
She had to make you believe it.
Instead, as she stood on the No10 steps, waiting to start her premiership, it was hard to tell if she was waving or drowning.
