His heart will go on: Rishi Sunak in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter/AP
By Ben Collins
June 21, 2024
We are now less than two weeks away from a UK general election scheduled for the 4th of July, US Independence Day. It also looks increasingly like a day that will see a change in the UK’s governing party for the first time in 14 years.
With everything else going on in the world — from an American presidential campaign to coverage-eating wars in the Middle East and Ukraine — it’s a fair bet, not that we have Ladbroke’s on speed-dial, that Conservative Leader Rishi Sunak is thankful for those diversions.
While there are differing views about which party is best placed to lead the country for the next five years, there is a consensus about two things. Firstly, this campaign seems to have already lasted for much, much longer than one month. Secondly, everything that could have gone wrong for the ruling Conservatives seems to have done so, with the qualifier that it ain’t over ’til it’s over.
The timing of the surprise election call on May 22 was within the gift of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But since then, it has been clear that the opposition parties have better prepared for this election campaign. Over the last four weeks, Sunak has stood soaked at a lectern in Downing Street while announcing the election.
Two days later, he visited the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, where the famous ship was built before it sank on its maiden voyage. The optics-triggered question by a local journalist to Sunak about whether he was captain of a sinking ship could not possibly have been unexpected. Sunak’s decision to follow that outing by asking voters at a campaign stop in Wales whether they were looking forward to the European soccer championships when Wales had failed to qualify also made for awkward viewing.
But the biggest faux pas of the campaign so far was Sunak’s decision to leave the 80th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings in Normandy early, to do a pre-recorded TV interview. While other world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, stayed for the full day, Britain’s prime minister went AWOL — a baffling choice that united people across the political spectrum in anger and shock. Sunak was obliged to make a rare apology the following morning. He was then forced to deny reports that he would resign as prime minister before election day.
Shortly after this, Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives and currently a member of the Scottish Parliament, announced that he would quit as leader if he is elected to Westminster. This followed disquiet over how he secured selection for the constituency over the previous candidate, who was pushed out after a period of ill health. We have also seen two outgoing Tory MPs endorse the local Reform candidate and join the Labour party respectively after the election was called.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has survived two leaders’ debates unscathed and — not surprisingly, given the political commandment that one should never interrupt one’s rival when he’s in the middle of self-destructing — has maintained a steady, first-do-no-harm approach.
Finally, just this week, it was revealed that several people close to Sunak, including his director of campaigns, may have placed bets on the timing of a July election before the date was announced. The UK Gambling Commission is investigating.
The Guardian‘s Marina Hyde, arbiter of all UK political preposterousness, wrote this about that: “Break out the comedy air quotes, because Tony Lee, the Conservative party’s director of campaigning, has taken a “leave of absence”. A development to which one’s immediate response is: wait, this Conservative campaign has a director???”
As for the other party leaders, the return of Nigel Farage as Leader of the Reform Party and his decision to stand as a candidate for Westminster, where he hopes to make it eighth time lucky, has bolstered Reform’s poll standings and further depleted those of the Conservatives. The polls have been remarkably consistent since the start of the campaign, with Labour maintaining their roughly 20-point lead over the Conservatives. The previously orthodox view that there would be a narrowing between the two parties as the campaign wore on has, so far, been proven wrong.
In fact, since Farage’s return to the fray, we have seen an uplift in Reform’s vote share where they have drawn level with the Conservatives and even achieved crossover where they have overtaken the Conservatives in one poll. The Conservatives have moved away from promoting the pretense that they can win the election, to now warning about the dangers of a Labour super-majority. An opinion poll released this week in the Daily Telegraph under the headline “Tory Wipeout” predicts that Rishi Sunak could be the first sitting prime minister in British history to lose his seat at the election.
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has continued his cunning-stunt campaign strategy of viral set pieces, including repeatedly falling off a paddleboard in Lake Windemere, pulling wheelies on a bike, careening down a water slide and submitting to a live summer fashion makeover on morning television. Davey’s personal story of being a carer for his disabled son and losing his parents due to ill-health at a relatively young age — sympathetically portrayed in a party political broadcast — has also helped him to connect with voters. It seems the British public may have finally forgiven the LibDems for entering into a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives under Nick Clegg in 2010.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has survived two leaders’ debates unscathed and — not surprisingly, given the political commandment that one should never interrupt one’s rival when he’s in the middle of self-destructing — has maintained a steady, first-do-no-harm approach. All of the main UK parties have now released their manifestos, and this has not changed the dynamics in the race.
In Scotland, the Scottish independence-driven Scottish National Party (SNP), appear on course to lose perhaps half of their current seats in Scotland as Labour’s popularity has rebounded from the lows following the 2014 independence referendum. In Wales, where Labour have been in government since 1999, they appear set to return the largest number of seats yet again.
In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin could become the party with the largest number of seats without having to increase their seat total, as the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are still under pressure resulting from the knock-ons of Brexit and the resulting Irish Sea Border, which those who favour the region remaining part of the UK do not like. The liberal Alliance Party could potentially win one or more seats from the DUP.
While it may appear inevitable at this stage that Labour will form the next British government with a large majority, time will tell whether predictions of the Conservatives being eclipsed by the Liberal Democrats as the Official Opposition are right. We cannot be certain how a defeated and much-reduced Conservative party will react, although history tends to suggest that an immediate move to more right-wing positions is likely.
The momentum for reuniting the right by bringing together the Conservative and Reform parties could quickly build as a result. The prospect of this and a sitting Conservative prime minister losing their seat as their party goes down to an historic defeat echoes Canadian political history, and the results and consequences of the 1993 federal election.
Ben Collins is a Belfast-based communications consultant and author of the book Irish Unity: Time to Prepare.
