Chances are that Rishi Sunak will lose his summer UK election gamble
- While the Conservatives should never be underestimated as a political force, the party is badly divided heading into the six-week election campaign. Try as he might, Sunak has been unable to change the UK’s political weather
This will be the United Kingdom’s first July national election since 1945. That year was a very poor one for the Conservatives with wartime leader Winston Churchill losing by a landslide to Labour.
This offers an outside possibility that Labour might win a majority comparable to 1945, or its last landslide year in 1997. To be sure, polls may tighten in the coming weeks, but the direction of travel appears clear towards Labour being the largest party again in the House of Commons.
First, UK inflation has fallen from double digits last year to 2.3 per cent, near the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, and the lowest level in around three years. Second, after a series of tax cuts in recent budgets, it is unlikely that the UK public purse can stretch any further in an autumn fiscal event.
Thirdly, Sunak remains worried by the political challenge to the right of the Conservatives from the populist Reform UK party. He might have been especially fearful that, if he waited beyond the summer to call the election, there would be an increasing possibility that Nigel Farage, who helped lead the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, would head the Reform campaign.
Yet, while it is plausible that the political prognosis for the Conservatives could be worse in the autumn or winter, this does not equate to July being a good time for the Conservatives to go to the polls. When Sunak became prime minister in 2022, the conventional wisdom was that he would significantly enhance the electoral fortunes of the Conservatives, but the party’s polling numbers have been nearly as bad as before.
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Little wonder that the private reaction of many Conservative MPs on Wednesday was bemusement both at Sunak’s decision not to wait till the autumn or winter, and the unprofessional choreography of the announcement with Sunak calling the election in pouring rain, a picture that has drawn much unfavourable commentary.
He got drenched, and he looked miserable. The front pages of Thursday’s national newspapers highlighted this with headlines poking fun at rain-soaked Sunak: “Things can only get wetter” and “Drown & out”.
So, while the Conservatives should never be underestimated as a political force, the party is badly divided heading into the six-week election campaign. Almost a decade and a half since David Cameron took power in 2010, and four prime ministers later (Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and now Sunak), the party looks increasingly tired and divided. This is shown in the growing numbers of Conservative MPs to announce their retirement from politics – well over 60, at the time of writing.
Indeed, there is much speculation that Sunak has, politically speaking, “given up” after a long period of exasperation. Since he assumed office, he has made numerous reboots and policy announcements, but nothing has fundamentally changed the UK’s political weather.
Taken together, Sunak’s attempt to win a fifth straight term for the Conservatives, which would defy political history, is most unlikely to succeed. The prime minister has struggled to secure sustained, significant political momentum in the last couple of years, and the election campaign is unlikely to see a fundamental reversal of this pattern that is powerful enough to send Labour towards a new era of power.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics
