It is one of the standard nightmares. An unseen predator is bearing down on you but your legs won’t move. Terror surges up from your lungs but you can’t scream. Is that how Rishi Sunak feels about the electoral reckoning at his heels? He pulls policy levers, pushes rhetorical buttons, makes speeches, resets and relaunches, but the polls won’t budge. Defeat is breathing down his neck.
The rest of us are having another common nightmare. It’s the one where you urgently need to be somewhere – an exam, a job interview, a hospital appointment – but everything conspires against you. The roads are gridlocked, the time of your appointment is changed at the last minute, your train is cancelled. You need to buy a ticket but the machine is broken, the counter is shut, your wallet is empty.
