British Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced Wednesday that a general election would be held on July 4, putting the fate of his embattled Conservative Party in the hands of a restless British public seemingly hungry for change after 14 years of Tory rule.
Mr Sunak's surprise announcement from the rain-soaked podium at 10 Downing Street was the start of a six-week campaign that will deliver a verdict on the party that has led Britain since Barack Obama was US president. It became. But the Conservative Party has sacked four prime ministers in eight years and staggered through a series of upheavals, including Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
For the past 18 months, most opinion polls have shown the opposition Labor party leading by double digits, giving the Conservatives a sense of inevitability. Despite this, Mr Sunak said there had been enough good news in Britain in recent days, including signs of new economic growth and the lowest inflation rate in three years, for his party to cling to power. I am calculating that it may be possible.
“Now is the time for Britain to choose its future,” Sunak said as a driving rain soaked his suit jacket. Voters' choice, he said, was “to build on the future we have built, or risk starting again”.
Political analysts, opposition leaders and members of Mr Sunak's own party agree that the electoral mountain he must climb is the Himalayas. Plagued by a weak economy, a disastrous foray into trickle-down taxation, and a spate of scandals, the Conservative Party appeared exhausted, adrift, divided by internal divisions, and fatalistic about the future. The Conservative Party faces a threat from the right-wing party, the anti-immigrant Reform Britain Party.
“The Conservative Party is facing something of an extinction-level event,” said Matthew Goodwin, a political science professor at the University of Kent who has advised Boris Johnson and other party leaders. “They are likely to suffer an even bigger defeat than the one they suffered at the hands of Tony Blair in 1997.”
Other political analysts were more cautious. Some pointed out that in 1992, Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government overcame its deficit in the polls and narrowly won to remain in power.
Yet since the Conservative Party won a landslide victory in the 2019 general election on the slogan “Get Brexit Done”, it has attracted young people and traditional Tory supporters in the south and south-west of England, and particularly in the industrial Midlands. and working-class voters in the north of England, whose support in 2019 was key to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's landmark victory.
Many have been disillusioned by scandals during Johnson's time in office, including a Downing Street social gathering that broke coronavirus lockdown rules, and even more so by the debacle of his successor, Liz Truss, who was ousted after just 44 days following proposed tax cuts that roiled financial markets, caused the pound to collapse and tarnished the party's reputation for economic competence.
Mr Sunak, 44, has stabilized markets and run a more stable government than his predecessor, but critics say he has never developed a convincing strategy to restore the country's growth. points out. He also failed to fulfill two other promises. The aim was to reduce waiting times for Britain's National Health Service and stop the flow of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel.
Many voters in the “red wall” constituency (so called because of Labour's campaign colors) appear ready to return to their roots within the party. Under the leadership of the capable, if not charismatic, Keir Starmer, Labor has shaken off the shadow of its left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer, a former government prosecutor, has systematically overhauled the Labour party, purging it of Corbyn's allies, eradicating lingering anti-Semitism within the party and putting a greater focus on economic policy.
“We have transformed the Labour party, brought it back to serve working people,” Starmer said in a speech after Sunak's speech. “Together we can stop the chaos, turn a new page, start to rebuild Britain and transform our country.”
Under British law, Mr Sunak is obligated to hold an election by January 2025. Political analysts had expected Mr Sunak to wait until the autumn to give the economy more time to recover. But following Wednesday's announcement that inflation had fallen to an annual rate of 2.3%, just above the Bank of England's 2% target, he may have been betting that the news was as good as it could have been. do not have.
Mr Sunak may also be calculating that the government will be able to fly the first planes carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda before the vote. Mr Sunak could then argue that another priority is moving forward.
The Rwanda policy, which forcibly returns asylum seekers to the African country without first hearing their cases, has been condemned by human rights activists, the courts and opposition leaders and has sparked numerous lawsuits, but Mr Sunak has made it a centrepiece of his policy because of its popularity with the Conservative base.
In his speech, Mr Sunak tried to give the impression that Labour had no policy agenda. “I don't know what they're offering and, in fact, I don't think you know either,” he said. But his message was occasionally drowned out by the sound of protesters blaring Labour's 1997 election song, “Things Can Only Get Better”, on loudspeakers in a nearby street.
The decision to go to voters sooner than expected is not entirely out of line for Mr Sunak, the son of Indian parents who emigrated from East Africa, then a British colony, 60 years ago. In July 2022, he split with Mr Johnson by resigning as chancellor, losing the support of his cabinet and ultimately ousting him from power.
Mr Sunak then ran for leadership but lost to Ms Truss in a vote of around 170,000 party members. After Ms Truss's economic policies backfired and she was forced to resign, Mr Sunak re-emerged and won the next election, this time with only Conservative MPs.
Mr Sunak inherited a dire set of problems: double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy and rising interest rates that are hitting people hard in the form of higher mortgage rates. Waiting times for an NHS, already battered by years of austerity, have stretched out to several months.
Mr Sunak has had some early successes, including a deal with the European Union that nearly ended the trade impasse over Northern Ireland. He surpassed his target of halving inflation, which was at 11.1% when he took office in October 2022. There are also signs the economy is starting to improve.
Britain emerged unexpectedly strongly from a shallow recession earlier this year, with its economy growing 0.6 percent. The International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for the country this year, praising the actions of the government and central bank.
But the good news could be temporary. Inflation is expected to pick up again in the second half of the year, and April's figure was not as low as economists had expected. That has led investors to rethink how quickly the Bank of England might cut interest rates, making a cut next month all but impossible. Even hopes of a rate cut in August have faded.
At the same time, the scope for further tax cuts before the election has narrowed. Data released on Wednesday showed public borrowing is rising, and the IMF has warned the government against cutting taxes, arguing that the UK has a huge need for increased public spending to improve public services, including the NHS, while also needing to stabilise public debt.
Ultimately, analysts say it is these underlying realities that have driven Mr Sunak's decision to appeal to voters now, and that the economy, rather than anything else, will decide his and his party's fate. Stated.
“You can talk about Partygate and the truss incident,” said Tim Bale, a political science professor at Queen Mary, University of London, referring to Johnson's lockdown-breaking social gatherings. “But in the end, the deciding factor in this election is sluggish economic growth and a country that is collapsing before our eyes,” he said.
Esha Nelson Contribution report.