Rishi Sunak is in office but not in power

Can Rishi Sunak still catch a break or has the plughole spiral of British politics now dragged him firmly into its unsparing ambit? It is just possible that he will come up for a lungful of air on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court delivers its long-awaited verdict on whether the Rwanda scheme is legal. More likely, the justices will rule the plan incompatible with their ever-more elastic interpretations of European Convention rights, sending him whirling further downwards.

Suella Braverman probably won’t be Home Secretary by then. Or, if she is, she will probably walk should Sunak fail immediately to come round to her view that we must now leave the Convention and its supervisory court in Strasbourg.

This is a Prime Minister heading into winter not doing any of the things he told us were his top priorities when Jack Frost was last nipping at our toes: not halving inflation, not growing the economy, not reducing debt despite his desperate protestations to the contrary, not bringing down NHS waiting lists and not stopping the boats.