“I have no doubt that we will get out of this recession some time. When we do, no doubt the Prime Minister and other will tell us it is the greatest miracle since the loaves and fishes”.
- Michael Foot in 1967
It has been a while. They used to be very frequent. So frequent were they that slightly annoyed Brenda from Bristol felt compelled to tell a BBC News interviewer “Oh no! Not another one”. Brenda, we feel your pain. I talk, of course, of General Elections.
They used to come around, for various reasons, every two or three years. However, it is now nearly four years since the last and the smart money is one not being called before Autumn 2024 – getting on for five years since Boris Johnson stormed to victory on the slogan “get Brexit done”. It would be an understatement to say, “how things have changed”.
The last thing Sunak needs is an Election. For a good six months the Labour Party has enjoyed a solid poll lead of between 15 and 20 per cent. Sunak’s competence ratings sink ever lower. His five pledges look increasingly implausible. He is already casting around to shift the blame. The post-war record of Prime Ministers, who come to power essentially through a coup within their own Party and then cling on the for the maximum Parliamentary period of five years, is not good. Sir Alec Douglas Home in 1964, James Callaghan in 1979, John Major in 1997 (although he won the Election in 1992) and Gordon Brown in 2010 were all decisively dispatched once voters were allowed access to the polling booth. Sunak is in a similar position. He became PM following a party coup to get rid of the disastrous Liz Truss and secured the position while avoiding a vote of Conservative Party members by offering rivals jobs in his Cabinet. Rumour has it party members would have dumped him as he was held responsible for the removal of their darling Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
Sunak oftens looks like a fish out of water. His broad smile while wearing a Saville Row suit (according to Nadine Dorries), mansplaining to a hospital patient the benefits of the ward she now finds herself occupying, is not a good look.
He has been labelled “inaction man” as the problems pile up and his response is all about “acting at pace”, “working night and day” while at the same time blaming everybody else. This might account for polling data that suggests voters no longer listen to him or his Party. He could be in the deepest of deep holes if voters have switched off and just simply feel it is time for a change.
It is little wonder that his strategy appears to be to hang on as long as possible in the hope fortunes will change.
His problem can be summarised as everything that should be going down is going up and everything that should be going up is going down.
So prices, costs, interest rates, rents, mortgages, fares, personal taxes, levels of human excrement in rivers and streams plus waiting times for GP and hospital appointments, passports, driving licences, powers of attorney and court hearings and potholes are on an upward trajectory while the number of doctors, nurses, other healthcare professionals, social care workers, social workers, policeman, firefighters, prison officers, train drivers, air traffic control, law officers plus local authority funding and gross domestic production and train reliability are on the way down. Sunak might argue the list is somewhat harsh, but the reality is that in those areas where staff numbers have recovered, it is only to levels of 13 years ago before the Tories ill-advised austerity programme.
On a regular basis, local news programmes report the closure of much valued charity sector services for local vulnerable children and adults because the local authority can no longer afford the grant.
However, a year is a long time in politics. It is easy to forget that barely a year ago Liz Truss was Prime Minister. Sunak must be hoping that the indicators of economic success begin to tick in his favour. There are suggestions the Tories might return to basics by tickling the tummies of motorists and whipping tax cuts out of the Chancellor’s hat. Tories are good at victim politics, and nothing works better than persuading drivers they are victims of local authorities and government departments which view them as easy sources of revenue. The fumes from old petrol and diesel vehicles might kill children but, as the Uxbridge by-election showed, portraying the Ultra Low Emission Zone as a tax raiser rather than an air purifier can be a vote winner.
I would not be at all surprised if the Chancellor’s final pre-election budget contains lots of juicy tax cuts, but voters will be told you will only get them if you return the Tories for the fifth time in a row. Tories cut your taxes while Labour puts them up will be the slogan.
However, the polling data is not as straightforward as it used to be. Voters may no longer be as in favour of tax cuts come what may. They have experienced austerity but do not like the damage it has done to services that voters depend on. The children attending schools with collapsing ceilings have parents as voters. The same parents have seen the effect of budget cuts on what schools can deliver for their children. We all know someone who has been frustrated and possibly harmed by the wait for a GP appointment or a hospital scan or consultation.
As in 1997, voters might see the priority as the repair of public services with tax cuts being parked. It will be interesting to see how voters in the North and Midlands react to Sunak’s dumping of Johson’s flagship levelling up policy.
There is some evidence of the Tories testing out with voters the potential of making the next Election a series of culture wars. The Home Secretary is testing out “wokeness” and its impact within the police force. My personal feeling is that most voters do not know what “wokeness” is and care even less. For them the priority is the impact of prices, rents and mortgages rises and the erosion of salaries and wages.
Will the Tories try to work voters into a rage on LGBQT+, human and abortion rights, minority rights and the (alleged) loss of influence for white folks while cooking Net Zero into a conspiracy theory in the same way Republicans have in the United States? I suspect they might test the waters on this given the close links between parts of the Tory Party and the Republicans.
As matters currently stand it is difficult to imagine Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party being in a better position for an Election that could be over 12 months away. Increasingly they look surefooted and like a government in waiting. Apparently so many businesses want access to the forthcoming Labour Party Conference, officials are having difficulty accommodating them all.
However, Sunak does, to an extent, have time on his side. Indicators might improve. Labour might falter. On the other hand, Sunak increasingly seems to be a victim of events he cannot control. Who would have foreseen three weeks ago the school concrete crisis or a terrorist suspect slipping out of prison in a cook’s outfit? Irrespective of how badly Sunak might do, turning over a Parliamentary majority of nearly 80 is a major challenge and, given our “first pass the post” electoral system is rarely achieved. The Tories could suffer a significant defeat and still find themselves holding the keys to No 10 for another four or five years.
David Blunkett told a radio interviewer this week that politics today feels to him more like 1964 (when Labour squeaked home) than 1997 (when Tony Blair won with a landslide). Labour does not have a square inch of space for complacency whereas the Tories might just feel the game is not totally up.
Comments