My husband texted me from London yesterday morning to inform me that it was pouring rain. Hours later it was still pouring down on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he stood outside Number 10 Downing Street to announce that the long awaited British general election would take place on July the 4th.
Poor Sunak – did not a single special adviser bring their golf umbrella that morning? Perhaps they decided against it, wrongly concluding that an absolutely soaking wet Sunak would look better than him sheltering from the rain. This, along with protesters playing that irritating “Things can only get Better” song from the Blair years, prompted the Telegraph to go with, “Things can only get Wetter.”
Or as Tory Bible the Spectator points out, “As an incumbent Prime Minister setting out your stall for re-election, you don’t want to provide your audience with an insistent visual metaphor for the way that you’re humiliated by things beyond your control (or, as a predecessor characterised them, ‘events, dear boy, events’).”
Indeed, it was a battle of the lecterns yesterday in Dublin and London. Our great government needed no less than three lecterns to announce that Ireland was recognising the state of Palestine, something that terrorist group Hamas welcomed. Hamas took time out of their busy schedule of terrorising hostages to say; “We consider this an important step towards affirming our right to our land.” I don’t even have time for this level of virtue-signalling by the Irish government, it was beyond parody. John nails it here.
Meanwhile across the Irish sea, someone somewhere was told to find that lectern and start dusting. The Prime Minister was about to make the gamble of his life and call an early general election. The feeling was that the UK election would be called for a day in the Autumn. What a surprise when Lord Cameron was called home from Albania, having just arrived there! The excitement was building in Westminster! Suddenly a soggy Sunak appeared at said lectern to make his announcement.
It caught everyone by surprise. The Times reports this morning, ‘many of Sunak’s own MPs and cabinet colleagues who were preparing for a November election were said to have been blindsided by his decision. One minister said: “This idea that you wrongfoot Labour [by calling an early election] is nonsense. Yes, they’ll be surprised, but they’re ready.”
It must be pure coincidence that July 4th lands the day after most private schools in England break up for the summer. A total accident! This means that those Tory MPs with children in private school can still flee to their second homes in France for the rest of the summer.
And you can be sure that there will be plenty of Tory MPs losing their seats on the 4th of July. The current polling has Labour leading by as much as 20 points in some, down to 16 points in the least worst-case scenario. I certainly believe that the only question will be just how big the Labour majority is. I don’t think the British public have any great feelings of ill-will towards Sunak – he seems a decent enough guy. But they have had enough of 14 years of Conservative rule.
And what a humdinger those 14 years were! It started with the Cameron/Clegg 2010 coalition, then Cameron in 2015, followed by Brexit in 2016, Theresa May in 2017 elected by the party and then losing seats in an unnecessary general election, followed by Boris Johnson 2019 – 2022. In the general election of 2019 Johnson won in a landslide, a majority of 80 seats.
Things fell apart after Covid however and Prime Minister Johnson was forced out and replaced by Liz Truss who was elected by the party membership. Truss was PM for about 5 minutes one Saturday afternoon and then the markets, I mean the parliamentary party, got rid of her and Sunak became Prime Minister. I commented on all of this over the Conservative Woman and I tell you I am worn out just thinking about it.
What this means for Ireland is yet to be seen. This will be the first UK election in 20 years that I will not be voting in – all Irish citizens who live and are registered in the UK can vote. It is true that a Labour government is likely to be warmer overall to an Irish administration, but I think it is a gamble to believe they will give much away on the immigration issue.
Unlike Ireland, both the Tory party and Labour party agree that immigration must come down. The one dividing line, the one clear line of disagreement is how to tackle the ‘small boats.’ Sunak got Rwanda through which was swiftly confirmed to be an excellent deterrent by the Irish government.
Pushed this morning on the Today programme Radio 4, PM Sunak said the flights to Rwanda would go in July, which is interesting. Sir Keir Starmer has committed to abolishing Rwanda and instead launch a new Border Security Command instead.
In fact, by identifying Rwanda as a deterrent to asylum seekers in Britain, the Irish government has made it much harder for any future Labour government to scrap it. The Irish government has made the Rwanda scheme a red-hot election issue.
In truth, there is very little between Labour and the Conservatives. Both parties want to protect Our NHS, an institution beloved by all in the UK, right or left. Nether will make any pledges to cut taxes – to be tied to such a pledge would be foolish. Both parties talk tough on crime even though they are letting prisoners out of prison early and asking police not to charge low-level offences due to prison overcrowding.
Even on the Rainbow stuff both are closely aligned as Labour have pulled back from gender self-identification. On the transgender nonsense, immigration and Israel alone the British Labour party is to the right of all major Irish political parties. You would have to go all the way to the Greens to match the extremism of the Irish establishment.
Brexit will not be an issue. Sir Keir Starmer will not risk losing red wall voters on this but I do believe once Labour gets a huge majority the pressure will very slowly build from the left-wing of the party to hold a return referendum during a Labour second term. That is my long-term prediction.
This UK general election will be fought on the centre ground. Neither party will tell the British public what they need to hear; the brutal truth that you cannot have European social security systems with Florida style taxation. It will be cakeism galore.