Why Sunak, the Tories could lose to Labor

LONDON — Rishi Sunak was halfway through announcing an election he risks losing in a country that often feels like it’s falling apart.

Then – in an apt metaphor for beleaguered Britain and its ruling Conservative party – the prime minister was drenched by a deluge in the middle of his speech and drowned by a nearby protester singing the song “Things Can Only Get Better.” .

Sunak began six weeks of campaigning on Thursday after calling a snap election to take place on July 4. He and his party are deeply unpopular with the public, according to every major poll. handed over an electoral erasure.

Many blame the Conservatives for Britain being seen as in decline.

Real wages have stagnated for more than a decade; waiting lists for health care and real estate prices are soaring; wastewater is pumped into rivers and the sea; dysfunction ravages everything from the nation’s railways to prisons; and Brexit – once the Tories’ cause celebre – is now widely seen as such a failure that most politicians prefer not to discuss it at all.

Due to electoral law, Sunak had to call a vote at some point this year. Even so, his decision to act immediately – with his party trailing a colossal 20 points behind the opposition Labor Party – has deeply angered many of his own lawmakers, now facing a landslide that would put many of them unemployed.

Many observers are asking: why now?

“Rishi Sunak has deployed the only weapon left in his arsenal: the element of surprise,” said Guto Harri, communications director for former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in whose administration Sunak was finance minister before that the two men become rivals. “At the very least, he took the kickoff on his own terms and showed he had the courage to go for it proactively.”

But even the prime minister’s traditional allies seemed to share the feeling that Sunak had perhaps also sounded the alarm after 14 years of Tory rule.

The conservative Spectator magazine splashed “The Flood” on the front pagealongside a caricature of a rain-soaked Sunak and a cover story about his “election gamble”.

The right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph went with: “Things Can Only Get Wetter”, a reference to a British dance classic from the 1990s.

It was the song played by protesters at the gates of 10 Downing St., which threatened to drown out Sunak’s speech. His choice was on several levels; it was also the soundtrack to Tony Blair’s successful election campaign in 1997 – the last time Labor swept the Conservatives out of government.

Electoral history is of course full of shocks, but no party in the history of British politics has reversed anything close to the current electoral gulf so close to one vote.

The current landscape is bleak for conservatives. But the recent good news could mean the situation is actually as good as it gets.

A few hours earlier, it was announced that inflation had fallen to 2.3%, compared to 11% reached at the end of 2022, its highest level in 40 years, the worst in the developed world. (U.S. inflation was 3.4% last month.)

This does not mean prices are falling for the voters Sunak will now travel across the country to court, just that they are rising at a slower rate.

In this sense, Sunak “chose the moment when the promise of economic news is as good as possible – without waiting to find out whether the promise materializes or not,” Harri said.

The prime minister may also be hoping for a boost in the polls from the launch of his flagship immigration policy, a plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda that has been lambasted by both opponents and by human rights groups. Amnesty International called it a “stain on the moral reputation of this country” and a “national shame.”

But 42% of voters – and 58% of Conservative voters – think immigration here is too high, according to Redfield & Wilton Strategies, a London pollster and consultancy. Net migration to the UK has risen sharply, despite Conservative promises that Brexit would have the opposite effect.

Sunak says flights to Rwanda will start taking off in July, meaning elections are likely to take place before the project is judged a success or failure, while offering a carrot to voters concerned about immigration.

These slim gains “probably give Sunak the best possible chance, in a competition where expectations of success are low”, Harri said.

Those prospects could be boosted by right-wing insurgent Nigel Farage’s announcement on Thursday that he would not run in the election, instead wanting to “help with the grassroots campaign” of his ally, former President Donald Trump, ahead of the American elections.

Farage’s anti-immigration British Reform Party has threatened right-wing Conservatives, but has failed to get elected seven times before.

Sunak’s supporters also say that while the Prime Minister may be unpopular, the public does not appear to have warmed to his main opponent, former prosecutor Keir Starmer. Despite strong poll numbers for his party, the Labor leader’s net personal favorability rating is minus 17 (compared to minus 51 for Sunak), according to YouGov.

Starmer transformed the party after its heavy defeat in 2019 under the leadership of then-leader Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong socialist. He moved Labor politics towards the center – drawing comparisons to Blair – while purging the leftists who once ran the show.

But for many on the left, his policies are too close to the Tories he seeks to replace, reflecting their tough talk on public debt and migration, and the abandonment of a £28 billion investment plan by year in green policies.

“I don’t think Starmer represents an alternative to Sunak in terms of policy,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, Corbyn’s former communications director. “Without a transformation agenda, the country will continue its trajectory of national decline. »

Polls strongly suggest that, rather than preventing Labor from coming to power, it will be criticism leveled at the party once it enters government, as seems likely once the British summer hits – rain and all – finished.