Rishi Sunak's Last Stand

It didn’t go according to plan. That’s true of Rishi Sunak’s 19 months in Ten Downing Street. And the manner of his announcement of an early election which will almost certainly see him evicted from office.

A little after 5 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, Sunak appeared at a lectern placed outside his Downing Street office to make a brief broadcast to the nation. As he did so, he was drenched by a sudden downpour of rain. His expensively tailored suit glistened as if a wet suit. And to add to the confusion, protestors outside the gates to Downing Street blared out pop music which threatened to overwhelm parts of the prime minister’s address.

Rishi Sunak has chosen to hold a general election six months earlier than he needed to, even though the governing Conservative Party is trailing far behind the Labour opposition in the opinion polls. The decision seems to have been made in the past day or two. But is this a surrender, or a decision to stand and fight?

The immediate prompt was the news earlier in the day that Britain’s inflation rate had fallen to just over 2%. Sunak came to power amid a collapse in confidence in the government’s economic policy. A reckless budget by his predecessor, Liz Truss, had spooked the markets and led to a surge in interest rates. Sunak can now claim that he has restored a measure of economic stability. While economic growth is distinctly modest, wages are now increasing more rapidly than prices.

 But on a whole range of other issues – notably plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, attempts to cut the calamitously long waiting lists for health treatment, and targets to clean up sewage-polluted water supplies – Sunak’s government has fallen well short of its declared goals.

He faces another acute problem. After 14 years in power, the Conservative Party is descending into acute faction fighting. Most Conservative MPs believe they will lose the coming election. Morale has collapsed. Defections in British politics are exceptionally rare, but in recent weeks two Conservative MPs have switched sides and now sit on the Labour Party’s benches in parliament. By holding an early election, Sunak is at least arresting the decline into open warfare within his own party. 

In his address from Downing Street, Rishi Sunak sought to present himself as a seasoned statesman who could safeguard Britain’s interests in a volatile and dangerous world. He pointed to Russia’s expansionary ambitions, the acute instability in the Middle East and China’s attempts to destabilise the major democratic powers. 

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The Conservatives election message to Britain’s voters is: in a turbulent and unpredictable world, stick with those you know and trust. Their difficulty is that opinion polls suggest that most voters no longer trust the Conservatives. And the pendulum has swung so emphatically away from the governing party, it’s difficult to see how the Conservatives can claw back that lead in the next six weeks.

 The leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, is a cautious, consensus-minded lawyer. After his party’s brief dalliance with hard-line socialism, he has brought Labour back to the political mainstream. He is not charismatic, but for many voters – who remember Boris Johnson’s turbulent premiership with a shudder – that’s no bad thing.

 A Labour government would not mean a fundamental change to Britain’s foreign policy. Labour are slightly more internationalist than the Conservatives and more open to closer cooperation with the European Union. But the main issues of the campaign will be about economic and tax policy and how to fund the National Health Service. And on these issues, the Conservatives are likely to lose the argument.

Many Conservative MPs, fearing that they will lose their Parliamentary seats, have been scouting for new jobs. If the opinion polls are borne out, this campaign will be Rishi Sunak’s last stand and in July, he too will be facing a change of job.

Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent.

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