Yesterday the Conservative Party prime minister, beleaguered Rishi Sunak, likely worried that more bad news is on the way, called a snap election for July 4. Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and the voters are ready to elect an incredibly shitty, lesser-of-two-evils Labour leader Keir Starmer Prime Minister. Polls show Labour running away with the election. The most recent poll I saw— released yesterday by Survation showed Labour ahead by 21 points, in line with all the public polling done this month:
Labour- 48%
Conservatives- 27%
Lib-Dems- 8%
Reform- 8%
Scottish National Party- 3%
Greens- 2%
Last week’s YouGov poll showed Labour ahead by 27 points!
Labour- 47%
Conservatives- 20%
Reform- 11%
Lib-Dems- 9%
Greens- 8%
Scottish National Party- 3%
Parliament’s current makeup:
Conservatives- 344
Labour- 205
Scottish National- 43
Lib-Dems- 15
Various other parties and independents- 42
I’m happy to announce that Labour’s new anthem is a song by D:Ream, “Things Can Only Get Better,” that was released by Reprise (my old company). D:Ream, from Northern Ireland, was had a number one song with it in the U.K. Take a listen:
Insiders say Sunak’s plan to win is based on England and Scotland doing well in the Euro 2024 football tournament (the week) and the good feelings translating to votes for the Conservatives. He really has nothing else to run on.
Starmer was all over Twitter, carrying on about stopping the chaos, turning the page and rebuilding the country and complaining about “low wages, low growth, fuel, poverty, uncertainty, chaos, decline...”
Jessica Elgot, a Guardian political editor, wrote that Sunak jumped because of 2 good stats: a drop in inflation and falling net migration and because he hopes the surprise election “will put new scrutiny on Labour’s plans. Sunak and his closest advisers believe their best chances of success lies in setting a clear distinction between a long-term plan that is beginning to bear fruit and Labour’s ideas— which they want to put under the election spotlight at a moment where the opposition could be caught off guard. The prime minister is said to feel that Labour has avoided the most difficult scrutiny until now and that there is little below the surface of Keir Starmer’s missions beyond the promise of economic stability. One source said: ‘We are essentially forcing a choice: does the public really want a Labour government? Do they genuinely think a Labour government will take the difficult action required?’ They may not want a Starmer government but they know it can’t be any worse than what they have now.
Other private motivations are likely to include damage control. An autumn general election was received wisdom in Westminster because Sunak’s only hopes seemed to hinge on more time— for inflation to fall, for the Bank of England to cut interest rates, for wages to increase, for flights to Rwanda to take off.
A summer election means Sunak has concluded that time is against him and the worst is yet to come. His party is 20 points behind Labour in the polls and— if he had waited— would perhaps be 25 points behind by the autumn.
No prime minister has ever called an early election when their party’s fortunes are at such a low ebb. But those polls show no signs of narrowing and his own personal ratings— some of the lowest on record— are only sinking further. There is no obvious bear trap waiting for Starmer that could make any material difference.
The Tory party itself has decided against yet another regicide and concluded that he will be the man to lead them over the cliff edge. Now many have concluded the longer Sunak puts off the inevitable, the fewer of them will remain at the next parliament. A large number have disappeared from Westminster, either to work their seats or to polish up their CVs for what’s to come.
There is only so long that this glum Tory truce can hold— and it was very unlikely to survive the party conference in October. That was the big risk of calling a November poll: in terms of party management, Sunak would be able to exercise very little control over a parade of his own ministers and backbenchers making their case to take his place.
Conservative MPs have greeted the news with a mixture of distress, expletives and weary resignation. “It’s all very well putting Labour on the back foot but he puts his own MPs on the back foot as well,” said one.
Sunak has been able to time his announcement around two pieces of good news: inflation is at its lowest level for almost three years and legal migration is falling— visa applications across key routes have fallen by 25% from the start of 2024.
But it is a small crumb of comfort. The decline in inflation was smaller than expected and, privately, Treasury figures have no hope of an early interest rate cut. No one in No 10 truly believes that people have started to feel the effects in their weekly shop yet. And irregular migration is not falling: arrivals on small boats are up nearly a quarter compared with the same period last year.
A key plank of a November election campaign would have been further tax cuts. But Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are staring into an empty cupboard. Government insiders believe that a key reason behind Wednesday’s call was a warning from the International Monetary Fund of a looming £30bn hole in the public finances.
In public, the government rejected the IMF’s argument that there was no room for a third cut in national insurance and instead the Treasury should consider unpopular measures such as cuts to public spending or scrapping the triple lock on the state pension.
There are other, smaller advantages to a summer election. It avoids a clash with the US election in November and the chaos that any stray comment from Donald Trump could have thrown into the grid, if the US and UK had run parallel campaigns.
There is also a small chance that the long-promised [deportation] flights to Rwanda will have taken off in the last weeks of the election campaign— but that is nowhere near certain.
…Reform will be further behind in its preparations— and that could limit the number of Tory losses in seats where a strong Reform showing might let Labour snatch the win. But the risk of a summer poll is that it gives Nigel Farage more flexibility to be involved, rather than making money across the Atlantic during the US election.
And what of the obvious downsides? Figures show that the Rwanda scheme is not deterring small boat crossings, which are at record levels and expected to rise further in the warmer months. Prisons are crammed full and police have been told to make fewer arrests. Cheerful news about lower inflation seems farcical to many, with prices up 23% since the start of 2021.
Perhaps the most compelling reason to call a general election is that the sooner these multiple crises become Starmer’s atrocious inheritance, the more Conservative MPs there will be to sit on the opposition benches.
A Guardian editorial called the election a reckoning that is overdue, noting that “when Britain last held a general election, the country was still a member of the European Union, there had been no pandemic and the Conservatives had already been in power for nearly a decade. That now feels like a long time ago, but not because of any sense of progress or accomplishments by the government. Quite the opposite. Fear of taking punishment for years of accumulated disappointment is the reason why Rishi Sunak has postponed the dissolution of parliament until now. The prime minister’s decision to set a date… is driven not by confidence in a record to celebrate, but by a recognition that procrastination had become untenable. The Conservative party, exhausted and riven by factional feuding, has become ungovernable, leaving the country feeling ungoverned… [Boris] Johnson and [Liz] Truss made Britain poorer and sabotaged its reputation as a stable democracy run by serious politicians. That is why, on taking office, Sunak pledged ‘to lead a government with integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.’ The country can now decide whether he fulfilled that vow. But it will also be a verdict on 14 years of Conservative incumbency.”