Man with a plan: Sunak has a strategy and it might work
The Tories have lost over a thousand council seats. Gaining more than 500 Laborites. Liberal Democrats on the march. The new prime minister is under pressure from his own side. Such was the electoral landscape on May 3, 1991, when the results of that year's local elections became known and a political obituary for John Major was commissioned.
This is also a description of what happened last week, when strikingly similar gains and losses were made by each side. Instead of John Major, read Rishi Sunak, the prime minister who has little chance of winning the next general election by Westminster pundits.
Except that Major won the election the following year, beating predictions that Neil Kinnock was destined to take 10th place. Could history repeat itself in 2024? Sunak certainly thinks so, and after analyzing the wreckage of last week's local election results, the Tories have found cause for hope.
Sunak and his team believe the worst is behind us and that momentum is beginning to shift from Labor to Tories. They are convinced that better news for the economy is on the horizon, and it is hoped that voters will soon begin to see real progress on the NHS and the small boat crisis.
Positive Outlook: Sunak and his team believe momentum is beginning to shift from Labor to Tories. Photo: Kin Chung
While it seems counterintuitive after such a heavy defeat last week, Labor has not made as much progress as Sir Keir Starmer's supporters hoped for, and they know there is still a chance that victory will slip away. Thus, all is not lost for the Conservatives, but the path to eventual victory is dangerously narrow, and divisions are widespread within the party as to which path to take.
Sunak is unshakable in his belief that voters will not be ready to listen to his vision of the future until he consistently proves that he can deliver on his promises here and now. Others in the party, including some cabinet ministers, want him to be much bolder and start talking now about strong conservative policies like tax cuts, economic growth and cuts to the Social Security bill. It's a tactical debate that rages within the parliamentary party, but Sunak believes he sees plenty of evidence that his plan is right.
The most positive indicator, from the Tories' point of view, is strong evidence that recent opinion polls have consistently overestimated Labor's leadership. This is not a new phenomenon: In 2015, opinion polls unfortunately failed to predict an outright victory for David Cameron, failing to capture enough retirees who make up the majority of the Conservatives' base.
Instead of a double-digit lead, analysts predict that the results of the local elections will lead to a seven-point lead for Labor in the general election. It's still bad news for the Tories, but just eight months ago, Labor averaged a 30-point lead in opinion polls, and Sunak has steadily narrowed that gap during his seven months in office.
1305 National Parliament Vote Intention last year
Sunak's team is taking it easy on the current picture, believing that «tremendous progress» has been made on base numbers in a relatively short time. When he took over from Liz Truss, all the talk in Westminster was of a Labor landslide in the next election. Now all predictions are about a hung parliament, so the direction is right for the Tories. James Johnson, co-founder of the polling firm JL Partners and former Downing Street sociologist, agrees that the seven-point lead «is not insurmountable at this stage.»
He said: “If there is one thing that the local elections proved, it is that the crazy predictions of the huge Labor majority are wrong. “The Conservatives are still behind and they probably need to be head to head or a couple of points ahead before the general election. It is still unlikely that they will get a majority, but it is plausible to assume that this can be achieved in the remaining time.
Barring surprises, Sunak has his sights set on the October 2024 election, giving him another 17 months to wipe out Labour's lead. Downing Street's plan is a two-stage approach to regaining leadership. The first phase, which is currently underway, involves «calm implementation» of improvements in key areas, including the economy, the National Health Service, and the small boat crisis.
The second phase, which may not begin until next year, is when Sunak begins projecting a vision of a brighter future if the Tories remain in power. One source familiar with Sunak's thinking said: «The strategy is focused on earning the right to be heard in next year's general election. The public is sophisticated and more likely to listen to what you have to say about the future if they see we have border control again and if they see progress in the NHS.»
Sunak has set his sights on the October 2024 elections. Photo: Simon Dawson.
This sentiment is based on the feedback the Tories get from focus groups who say, «They want us to just deliver because they don't believe us.» but when we speak of seeing,” according to the same source. And there are plenty of successes that Sunak can already point to, if only the Tories were better at keeping the public aware of them. Sunak's illegal migration deal with Albania proved to be a stunning success.
At the same time last year, Albanians accounted for 45.6% of illegal Channel crossings, with 9,247 traveling in small boats in the second quarter of 2022. Sunak then struck a deal with his Albanian counterpart to station British Border Guard officers at Tirana airport. ban illegal migrants from boarding planes and change the status of Albania to a safe country in order to ensure expedited deportation.
In the first three months of this year, only 29 Albanians crossed the canal, representing only 0.8 per cent of all crossings. Sunak believes his small boat strategy, which also sees border troops stationed on the French coast for the first time and enforced a policy of sending arrivals to Rwanda for processing, will significantly reduce their numbers and prove he can deliver on promises where others are no longer coping. failed.
He also transferred £200m from the new bike path fund to repair an additional four million potholes after voters said the latter was more important than the former. He is banking on five priorities he announced in January: halving inflation this year; economic growth; reducing public debt; reducing NHS waiting lists and tackling the small boat crisis.
Sunak's advisers say the five priorities were «very carefully calibrated because those are the questions that 2019 voters wanted to hear from us.» Downing Street says progress is being made on all of them. The number of people waiting for scheduled treatment within 18 months fell from 125,000 at the peak of the Covid lag in September 2021 to just 20,000 by mid-March this year, a decrease of 84%.
Sunak announced an additional 800 ambulances and 5,000 more beds to further ease the crisis. Living wages averaged £3,300 per family this and last year, although some Conservative MPs feel the government has done a poor job of ensuring people know how much they are getting and where they are coming from, especially with the discount on payment of electricity bills that do not mention the government when transferring to bank accounts.
Downing Street reports that progress is all Sunak's five priorities. Photo: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street
Economic growth is taking longer to filter through as policies that include tax cuts for businesses that invest in the UK, investment zones, free ports and 30 hours of free childcare per week will not deliver instant results. Inflation has begun to decline and is projected to fall after the summer. Many Conservative MPs consider the five priorities not ambitious enough.
Some campaigners during local elections told the Tory high command that the public knows nothing about the five priorities or progress on them, and that Sunak needs to shout much louder, if he wants to be heard. Familiar complaints about Sunak being a technocrat with poor political sense resurface.
There is grumbling that he fell short of expectations about the likely scale of losses in local elections, allowing the message to spread that it could be «up to 1,000» when it eventually got more. Others nitpick the fact that Sunak and his team have safe seats and have never had to take and hold a Labor seat; that they manage with a focus group rather than listening at the doorstep.
Some in cabinet want the government to talk more about cutting the Social Security bill: A record 54 percent of households receive more from the government than they pay in taxes (including the NHS and education), and 5.9 million people receive universal credit. They want him to use whatever savings he has to eliminate as many taxes as possible, including inheritance tax, and give tax breaks to people who relieve pressure on the NHS by paying for private health care.
Professor Sir John Curtis, Britain's best-known political scientist, is among those who say Sunak needs to be bolder and sooner. He said: “When he is so far behind, he needs to tell us what kind of country he wants to create by 2030. Does he have a vision? All of his five priorities are about what will happen between now and the end of next year. There is no forward-looking agenda.
“If he’s going to draw a line between himself and the previous two regimes, he needs to paint it in bright, vibrant colors, and not just ‘thank God there’s no crisis every day. Government strategists are optimistic about the need to stick to the existing plan and can get annoyed when told MPs want to see more from Sunak.
«Westminster is moving at a hundred miles an hour, but for the average voter, last year's confusion happened just yesterday,» one government source said. “People are not interested in the grand vision of a low-tax economy. It has nothing to do with the electorate politically. That's what happened in October, and it didn't end particularly well. We are more interested in doing something for the electorate than for commentators.” Sir John agrees that: “Tax cuts are not what the public wants. The government must make public services work.»
Sources close to Sunak say tax cuts are «a priority, but not an immediate priority.» One senior conservative source said: «The public understands that there is a huge amount of debt due to the cost of Covid and they know that tax cuts cost money.»
So anyone hoping to hear Sunak's plan to transition from a high-tax, low-growth economy to a low-tax, high-growth economy in the fall budget may have to wait a little longer. Another Whitehall source said: «Things like personal taxes will have to be deferred until the start of the tax year next April, so this is probably the earliest time that income tax can be reduced. It would be difficult to achieve this in any other way. .
“There are also certain things that you can’t announce ahead of time due to market conditions – you can’t say that we will lower stamp duty in six months, for example, because no one will buy a house for six months.” Another reason why Sunak's advisers are sure he is still in the fight is that the public has not accepted his opponent, and in an election system that is increasingly dependent on the individual, voters tend to think they are voting for the prime minister. and not for a local deputy.
Conservative strategists will ruthlessly shred Sir Keir's backflips on everything from the Lab-Lib coalition to tuition abolition when it comes to the election campaign. Johnson said: «It's still Starmer's advantage, but there are clear doubts and concerns about him. The nickname «Captain Backdating» is indeed a buzzword, and people talk about him, talking about what he thinks it will take to be elected, and not really believing in anything.
“The voters want to love Rishi while their shrug towards Keir turns into hostility. There is a feeling that he will overdo it with you, but when his shift is over, he will leave. When Johnson's company compiled a cloud of people's opinions of Starmer last year, the most frequently used word was «boring.» 39;Shrugging at Keir turns into hostility' Johnson says Credit: Stephan Russo
When the exercises were repeated in April, another word came to the fore: weak. Other commonly used epithets included useless, unreliable and insecure. Before die-hard Conservatives get too excited about the prospects for 2024, an important caveat needs to be made about Labour's seven-point lead. There were no local elections in Scotland, where the collapse of the SNP could pay big dividends for Labor, or in London, Labor's stronghold, meaning a seven-point lead is likely to be too low.
However, it is also true that the polls reflect an unprecedented number of «don't know», most of whom, according to psephologists, are former conservative voters. If, as Downing Street believes, they are inclined to return to the Conservative fold after they see some results from Sunak, the picture may look very different. Senior government sources have confirmed that Sunak's team is looking into previous election history to understand how hitting local elections could translate into winning the general election.
This includes the 1991 elections, perhaps the most comparable, when the Tories were in power for more than a decade, changed from a charismatic leader to a more managerial one, and were defeated in local elections. In the same year, the Tories lost 1,035 council seats (compared to 1,063 in 2023), Kinnock's Labor gained 584 seats (537 in 2023), and Paddy Ashdown's Liberal Democrats gained 407 seats (exactly the same as in 2023) . Then, as now, Labor as a whole had more councilors than Tories for the first time in two decades.
The following year, the Major turned a 3% deficit in local elections into a 7.5% advantage. over Labor and retained its majority despite the loss of 40 seats. So what does the conservative minister of the 1991 harvest have to say to the current regime? David Mellor, then chief secretary of the treasury, agrees that the Tories are «not lost» but thinks a lot will depend on whether Labor makes mistakes in the next 18 months.
He said: «Labor should have won in 1992, but people looked at Kinnock and they didn't like him. Labor's support was a mile wide and an inch deep, and there is some resemblance to the present.
“Starmer is not Blair, he is closer to Kinnock because I think people are eager to find a reason not to vote for him. I don't think it would take him or Angela Rayner a lot of shenanigans to make his lead disappear.»
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