An underrated factor in deciding when the general election is held is whether Issac Levido is paid by the month. If the polls are right, after the election, it might be a very, very long time before anyone is again willing to hire the Aussie as their campaign chief. As such, he has every financial incentive to press Rishi Sunak to go to the country as late in the year as possible.
Nonetheless, one would hope that British democracy hangs on more than one Antipodean’s employability. The Prime Minister’s stock answer has been that his “working assumption” is that an election will be “in the second half of this year”. We Westminister watchers have usually taken this to mean October or November. The latest possible date would be January 28th next year.
The logic for an autumn election is obvious. The Government trails Labour by 20-odd points. The Bank of England has not begun cutting interest rates. Waiting until October or November might see them fall from their 16-year high and provide time for Jeremy Hunt to squeeze in one last tax-cutting fiscal statement before voters go to the polls. One more National Insurance cut, with feeling!
With his Rwanda scheme up and running in the next three months, Sunak will also hope the summer will see a steady stream of deportations to Kigali. He might finally deliver on his promise to ‘Stop the Boats’. October’s party conference could become a pre-poll rally, the mood buoyed by six more months of the newspapers picking apart Keir Starmer’s shallow promises and tunnel vision.
Again, the logic seems sound enough. On a personal level, one also imagines Sunak would like to stay in Number 10 as long as he can manage. He currently hovers behind Anthony Eden in the list of Prime Ministers by tenure. Pushing towards the autumn would overhaul Lord Avon and provide a few more months of getting to ride in the Prime Ministerial plane and pretending to be important.
Yet a few signs this week have suggested that Sunak may not have ruled out a summer election after all. Of course, hacks will treat every instance of the Prime Minister not categorically ruling out going to the polls in July as an excuse to suggest that he is considering to. But there have been straws in the wind more substantial than an exasperated answer to a press conference.
Our Deputy Editor touched upon one yesterday. Sunak and Hunt’s announcement of a defence spending boost less than two months after they refused to cave into backbench pressure at the Budget raises eyebrows. It might be currying favour with Sunak-sceptic MPs before a local election shellacking. Or are the pair no longer planning another pre-election fiscal event instead?
It was apparent from the moment the Chancellor started speaking on March 6th that he was not delivering a pre-election Budget, for the simple reason that, if it was, it was depressingly meagre. Leaving aside the merits of the OBR’s fiscal straightjacket, Hunt’s Dad jokes and a prolonged shifting of money from one pocket to another had nothing to get the heart of the polis racing.
The assumption thus descended that we would be going through the rigmarole again at some point in the autumn. The Treasury are reportedly considering yet another National Insurance cut, along with some blue-sky thinking about rolling back Stamp Duty. Yet ONS figures released this week might have thrown a spanner into the best-laid plans of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Government borrowed £120.7 billion in 2023-24 – £6.6 billion more than the OBR had expected. This doesn’t rule out further tax cuts in the autumn. The Chancellor could always pencil in even more unrealistic spending cuts for five years in the future, enabling him to conjure up some more fiscal headroom. But it does suggest he may not have the freedom he might have hoped for.
A straw in the wind? Waiting another six months for the economy to improve has always been a faintly ludicrous plan. The NI cuts have done nothing to shift the polls the last two times they have been foisted on ungrateful voters. Why should they do so now? Even if interest rates do begin falling, voters are still a long way away from feeling better off than they did five long years ago.
Moreover, Sunak waiting longer can allow his position to deteriorate further. Number 10 hopes that a flight taking off to Rwanda at some point this summer will be a big political moment, proving their seriousness on illegal immigration. But as I have explained, the idea the boats are going to be stopped by a few dozen illegals taking a Ryanair to Kigali is for the birds. The scheme is a dud.
As the number of small boats arriving surges towards record levels even as token flights take off, Sunak’s strategy will have been revealed as utterly threadbare. The political capital of two whole years will have been spaffed raising the salience of an issue on which Sunak cannot and will not deliver. We could begin counting down the days until a poll puts us third behind ReformUK.
In such a climate, speculation about Sunak’s position will only grow louder. I have raised the prospect of letters going into Graham Brady after the local elections. Even if the threshold isn’t met then, the longer the Prime Minister waits to go to the country, the longer the time available for the polls to sour further, and for MPs to become jittery. When the herd moves…
These realities stand even if the local elections aren’t the political equivalent of the Chicxulub asteroid impact. If Andy Street and Ben Houchen survive, if Susan Hall does better than expected, and if the number and location of lost council seats are surprisingly uncatastrophic, Sunak could claim some form of momentum, and go to the country. Pig! Meet lipstick.
But if the worst happens, he’ll be doomed anyway, and may as well give in to Fortuna. Going earlier also has the benefit of catching the Opposition on the hop. Nigel Farage hasn’t yet made his much-mooted return to politics. He will add four points to Reform’s numbers alone. Labour are still not quite ready for an election, having not yet worked out what they want to do in office.
When the public have decided a government is doomed, it can do little to shift its fate. Just ask John Major or Gordon Brown. We’re at the end of an age. It may be unappetising, but the voters are ready for Labour. The longer Sunak is seen to delay Starmer’s arrival out of a mixture of timidity and vanity, the angrier the voters will become at his squatting. Things can always get worse.
Having just booked my summer holiday, I have little personal desire to spend the coming months covering an election whose outcome will only be grim. But the country deserves a government that wants to do something more than batting out time. Sunak’s best hope to avoid a wipeout may thus be calling a summer election, and telling Levido to start updating his LinkedIn.
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Author: William Atkinson
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