British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday called a snap general election for July 4, leaving the fate of his struggling Conservative Party to a restless British public that appears eager for change after 14 years of Conservative rule.
Mr Sunak’s surprise announcement, from a rain-splattered lectern outside 10 Downing Street, was the kick-off to a six-week campaign that will deliver a verdict on a party that has ruled Britain for that Barack Obama is president of the United States. But the Conservatives have dismissed four prime ministers in eight years, weathering the serial chaos of Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
With the opposition Labor Party ahead in most polls by double digits over the past 18 months, a The defeat of the conservatives now seems inevitable. Still, Mr Sunak believes Britain has received just enough good news in recent days – including glimmers of hope. new economic growth and the lowest inflation rate in three years – that his party could perhaps cling to power.
“The time has come for Britain to choose its future,” Mr Sunak said as pouring rain soaked his suit jacket. The voters’ choice, he said, was to “build on the future you built or risk going back to square one.”
Political analysts, opposition leaders and members of Mr. Sunak’s own party agree that the electoral mountain he must climb is Himalayan. Burdened by a weak economy, a calamitous foray into trickle-down tax policies and successive scandals, conservatives appear exhausted and adrift, divided by internal squabbling and fatalistic about their future. They face a threat on the right from the anti-immigrant Reform UK party.
“The Conservatives are facing a sort of near-extinction event,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent who has advised Boris Johnson and other party leaders. “It looks like they’re going to suffer even biggest defeat than against Tony Blair in 1997.”
Other political analysts were more cautious: some pointed out that in 1992, the Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major overcame a deep electoral deficit to win a narrow victory and remain in power.
Yet since the party won the 2019 election handily under the slogan “Get Brexit done”, the Conservatives have lost support among young people, traditional Conservative voters in the south and south-west of England and , above all, working class voters in the South West of England. the industrial Midlands and the north of England, whose support in 2019 was key to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s historic victory.
Many are disappointed by the scandals of Mr Johnson’s tenure, including Downing Street social gatherings that broke Covid lockdown rules, and even more so by his successor’s fiasco, Liz Truss, ousted after just 44 daysfollowing proposed tax cuts that shook financial markets, torpedoed the pound and shattered the party’s reputation for economic competence.
Although Mr. Sunak, 44, stabilized markets and led a more stable government than his predecessors, critics say he never developed a convincing strategy to revive the country’s growth. He also failed to deliver on two other promises: to reduce waiting times in Britain’s National Health Service and to stop the flow of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel.
Many voters in “red wall” districts – so called because of the color of Labor’s campaign – appear ready to return to their roots in the party. Under the capable, if uncharismatic, leadership of Keir Starmer, the Labor Party has shaken off the shadow of its left-wing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr. Starmer, a former government prosecutor, has methodically overhauled the Labor Party, purging Mr. Corbyn’s allies, rooting out a legacy of anti-Semitism in the party’s ranks and sharpening its economic policy.
“We have changed the Labor Party, we have put it back to working for working people,” Mr Starmer said in his remarks after Mr Sunak. “Together we can end the chaos, turn the page, start rebuilding Britain and change our country.”
Under British law, Mr. Sunak was required to hold an election by January 2025. Political analysts had expected him to wait until the fall to give the economy more time. recover. But following Wednesday’s announcement that inflation had fallen to an annual rate of 2.3 percent – just above the Bank of England’s 2 percent target – he maybe bet the news was as good as it could be.
Mr Sunak may also believe the government could send a first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda before the vote. This would allow him to claim progress on another of his priorities.
Rwanda’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to the African country without first hearing their cases has been condemned by human rights activists, courts and opposition leaders – and has sparked numerous legal challenges. But Mr Sunak has made it a centerpiece of his program because it is popular with the Conservative Party’s political base.
In his remarks, Mr Sunak attempted to portray Labor as lacking an agenda. “I don’t know what they’re proposing – and in truth, I don’t think you do either,” he said. But his message was sometimes drowned out by the sound of Labor’s 1997 campaign anthem, “Things Can Only Get Better,” blaring from a protester’s loudspeaker on a nearby street.
For Mr Sunak, the son of Indian-origin parents who emigrated from British colonial East Africa sixty years ago, the decision to turn out to vote earlier than planned is not completely out of character . In July 2022, he broke with Mr Johnson by resigning as Chancellor of the Exchequer, triggering the loss of cabinet support that ultimately forced Mr Johnson from power.
Mr Sunak then launched a spirited campaign to become party leader, losing to Ms Truss in a vote of the party’s nearly 170,000 members. After Ms Truss’s economic policies backfired and she was forced to resign, Mr Sunak re-emerged and won the next contest, this time held only among Conservative Party MPs.
Mr Sunak inherited a worrying set of problems: double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy and rising interest rates, which have hit people in the form of higher rates on their mortgages. Waiting times at the National Health Service, exhausted after years of budgetary austerity, stretch for several months.
Mr. Sunak has had some early successes, including a deal with the European Union that largely defused the trade standoff over Northern Ireland. He exceeded his goal of halving the inflation rate, which was 11.1% when he took office in October 2022. And there are signs that the economy is starting to recover.
Britain had a Surprisingly strong exit from a superficial recession at the start of this year, with economic growth of 0.6 percent. The International Monetary Fund has raised its growth forecast for the country this year, while welcoming the actions of the government and central bank.
But the good news could be fleeting. Inflation is expected to rebound again in the second half of this year, and the April figure was not as low as economists expected. This has led investors to rethink when the Bank of England might cut rates, all but ruling out the possibility that they will be cut next month. Even expectations for an August rate cut have diminished.
At the same time, opportunities for improvement tax cuts before the elections were restricted. Data released Wednesday showed government borrowing was up. And the IMF warned the government against tax cuts, arguing that Britain had huge demands for additional public spending to improve its public services, including the NHS, while also needing to stabilize its public debt.
Ultimately, analysts say, it is these fundamental realities that drove Mr Sunak’s decision to turn to voters now, and it is the economy, rather than anything else, that will decide his fate and that of his party.
“You can talk about Partygate and Truss,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, referring to Mr. Johnson’s social gatherings in violation of the lockdown. “But ultimately, the factors that will decide this election are anemic growth and a state that is collapsing before our eyes.”
Eshe Nelson reports contributed.
