On May 22, the British Prime Minister announced that the election would be held on July 4. Elections in the United Kingdom are always held on a Thursday. The election could have been held as late as January 2025.
Rumours abounded in the hours before the announcement. Some had said Sunak would leave the election until at least October. That is because, on October 25, he will have been PM for two years. Moreover, cooler weather lowers turnout, which would impact Labour more than the Conservatives.
Various Conservative policies were due to pay dividends. The economy is growing, taxes have been cut, inflation is falling, and the Rwanda Plan was supposed to start in July. The controversial Rwanda Plan (RP) stipulates that those who enter the UK illegally and claim asylum would be deported to Rwanda and processed there. If they were granted asylum, it would be in Rwanda. The idea is that if people knew that entering the UK illegally would mean they would never be allowed to stay, they would not do it.
That Sunak called an election for July proves that he did not believe that deportations would start in July. The plan was delayed by legal challenges. It is believed that no airline would fly deportees there. The plan had already started to pay off, with illegal immigrants facing deportation to Rwanda moving to the Republic of Ireland in their tens of thousands.
Nothing Sunak did had a positive effect on the Conservatives’ standing in the opinion polls. Labour is at least 15 percentage points ahead.
It is said that Sunak became despondent. There was a lot of disloyalty in his party. Of the 370 Tory MPs, over 70 said they would not seek re-election. Some of them publicly criticized the party. Others are standing again but expect to lose their seats. There is less incentive for loyalty. MPs often behave in the early years of government in the hope of being rewarded with a ministry. But as the Conservatives are due to be swept out of office in months, there is little incentive to be good.
Why is the Conservative Party so unpopular? After 14 years in office, there is little to show for it. For much of this time, there was austerity due to the credit crunch of 2008. There has been a cost-of-living crisis for much of this time.
The National Health Service (NHS) is in a parlous condition. The salaries of doctors and nurses are 20% below where they were in 2008 in real terms. The same goes for teachers and most public sector workers. There were many strikes, although by 2024 these had declined a lot.
Liz Truss was Prime Minister for a cataclysmic 49 days. Her insane economic plan added billions to the national debt and drove up inflation. She remains in Parliament and unrepentant. She published her deeply unreflective autobiography ‘Ten Years Left to Save the West’ in 2024. It was a very unwelcome reminder of her for the public. It was the last thing Sunak needed.
Boris Johnson was PM and kept lying. The disgraced former PM was forced out of Parliament. He grossly breached lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic.
Many schools are close to collapse. There is a recruitment crisis among teachers. Pupils are often very badly behaved. Teachers’ civil liberties are taken away. They are demanded to do more and more as they are paid less and less.
The Conservatives are supposed to be the party of small government. Yet the civil service has expanded.
An aggressively woke agenda is pushed by the public sector. This is all taxpayer-funded. There is more form-filling than ever. Education and healthcare are strangled by red tape.
Crime has risen sharply. The police are ineffectual. They spend more time policing Facebook, going on courses about transsexuals and racism than fighting crime.
The Conservatives have at best failed to halt the onward march of the left. In many regards, they have actively advanced the leftist agenda.
There are a few things that the Conservatives achieved. Brexit was the Conservatives' accomplishment. With it came dozens of trade deals with other countries. The government also repealed much of EU legislation. They stabilized the economy in 2010. They got unemployment to a record low in 2020. They have more people than ever at university. They have record numbers of international students studying in British universities. They won the referendum in Scotland, keeping it within the United Kingdom. The UK has made huge strides in terms of renewable energy.
Sunak wants to restrict international students coming to the UK. This is asinine and will wreck one of the country’s few booming exports: education. British universities desperately need international students because they pay fees that are double or triple that of home students.
The polls suggest that the results of the election will be:
Labour 40%, 400 seats
Conservatives 28%, 150 seats
Liberal Democrats 12%, 40 seats
SNP 3%, 30 seats
Plaid Cymru 1%, 5 seats
Greens 5%, 2 seats
Reform UK 6%, 0 seats
Northern Ireland parties 3%, 18 seats
Mr Sunak will go down in history as the first non-white Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. As a Hindu, he is also the first non-Christian to hold that office.
The Tory Party will probably be out of office for 20 years. It is rancorously unpopular with the younger generation.
Sir Keir Starmer is the leader of His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. He will be appointed PM by the King. Labour will form a government.
Labour wants to tax fees for independent schools. This will drive middle-class parents out of independent schools. Tens of thousands of pupils will go to state schools that do not have places for them. Some independent schools will go bust.
Labour wants to build more houses. This will ruin environmentally sensitive areas. It will drive down house prices for homeowners.
Labour has promised not to raise taxes. Therefore, it will be unable to improve the NHS, armed forces, police, or education.
Because Labour can do nothing on public services, it will be even more aggressive and bigoted on woke policies. It will promote the mass murder of children through abortion. It will deprive people of their human rights to protest and to have a fair trial. It will attack free speech.
Starmer will likely be PM and retire after 5 years when he will be 67. The next leader of Labour, and therefore PM, will be David Lammy.
The author is a political analyst from the UK, he can be watched on YouTube: George from Ireland