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No sooner had the travelling broadcast pack set up outside for our short interviews with the prime minister at a railway depot in Johannesburg, than pouring rain, thunder and lightning began forcing the crews to decamp into a tin roof hanger for the broadcast round.
It seemed like an apt metaphor for the storms Sir Keir Starmer is facing back home.
Seventeen months into office, he has the lowest popularity ratings of any prime minister since records began, there is now open conversation in his party about whether he’s right to lead Labour into the next general election, and he is heading into a very tempestuous budget in which he might end up breaking manifesto pledges to working people.
Sir Keir steadfastly refused to recommit to the tax pledges he made in the election in our short interview on Friday.
His operation is not impervious to the peril he is in.
As the prime minister set off on his 45th overseas trip since taking office in July 2024, he and his team were at pains to stress that diplomacy and business done at the G20 in South Africa was all about bringing jobs and investment back home.
On the way over on the plane, Starmer talked about the 200,000 jobs created by G20 countries in the UK as a way of explaining why these trips do matter back home.
And, on landing, the government announced £400m of export investment into the UK on the back of this trip.
To hammer home the point, we interviewed the prime minister – and this matters because those pictures will be beamed into living rooms across the UK – at a train depot in Johannesburg, to highlight that these trains were partly manufactured in Alstom’s factory in Derby, East Midlands.
The message here is that the prime minister is focused on trade and business for the UK.
The inclement backdrop is a reminder of the difficult days he has ahead – because it looks like Labour is about to break manifesto commitments on taxes.
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