Inflation falling, Brexit deal signed & attack ad row mean Labour General Election win looks less likely by the day
JUST when you thought it was safe to answer the front door again, the canvassers are back.
Blue rosette-wearing Tories urging you to think about potholes and buses and to ignore two years of chaos in Westminster, while red-ribboned Labour activists argue the opposite.
And I have bad news for you.
They won’t stop after the local elections on May 4, when Rishi Sunak faces voters for the first time, in 230 towns and cities across England.
This is just a dress rehearsal.
By this time next year Britain will be engulfed in General Election fever.
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It has been reported the PM is eyeing up October 2024 to go to the country.
Which is exactly what I would say too — if I was trying to wrong-foot my opponents with an even earlier poll next May or June.
Just six months ago, talk of the Tories going early would have been inconceivable.
Sunak inherited a smouldering wreck of a government and the worst Conservative poll ratings in a generation.
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But with inflation predicted to plummet in the coming months and a recession just about dodged on the technicalities, tiny blue shoots of recovery are starting to be seen.
Add to that some baby steps toward fixing the Channel boats issue and a Brexit deal that left rival Boris Johnson licking his wounds after only he and a handful of headbangers voted against it.
Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP’s self-immolation seems to have cheered up almost everyone in Westminster.
While No 10 insists they are just getting on with the day job, behind the scenes preparations are well under way for an election.
Tory HQ reported their best ever first quarter for donations this year, after big-money backers had closed their wallets during a roller-coaster 2022.
That cash is directly “tooling up” campaign HQ, with researchers and spin doctors ready for the coming fight.
While MPs have returned to their patches this Easter to campaign in the local polls, there is only one question on their lips: When will the real thing be?
Handful of headbangers
“People haven’t forgiven us for last year yet, but they are talking about it in the past tense now”, reports a source close to party chairman Greg Hands.
At Christmas Tory MPs were preparing for annihilation. Now a hung Parliament or even a small majority is on their lips.
When it’s ministers phoning journalists asking what they are hearing about a potential election date, not the other way round, then you know things are really in flux.
In truth, no decision has been made, but spring 2024 is still in play.
Another bruising round of local elections in May that year could upset momentum ahead of an autumn poll, and it is expected that April will finally see some pre-election tax cuts kick in.
While Labour still has an average poll lead of around 15 points, the PM’s personal ratings are ticking up and Sir Keir Starmer has noticed this.
Attempts to tie 13 years of Tory government around the neck of the relatively shiny new PM have been clunky so far and got personal very quickly.
While some in Labour have been cock-a-hoop about their dubious attack, claiming the PM does not think paedos should be sent to prison, others at the top of the Shadow Cabinet feel it surrendered the moral high ground.
“People think Starmer is boring, but a decent bloke and honest,” laments one strategist.
“He’s decided to blow that up in one week.”
Hungry for a change
While the dividing lines were clear between self-titled “Mr Rules” versus freewheeling Boris Johnson, it’s obvious Starmer finds Sunak a trickier customer.
No 10 insiders insist the PM was bemused by the whole affair and the ads were actually a sign of weakness as no one really believes a) that it is true or b) that is what Starmer really thinks.
One source said: “It played into voter concerns around Starmer — that he just criticises from the sidelines and never offers any solutions. And that he lacks authenticity.”
More hardline elements of the Tory attack machine are salivating at the fact Starmer has taken the gloves off on records and personal attacks, meaning all is fair in love and war.
“It has opened up a front which has been difficult to get going so far — his previous record,” says one party hand.
“It has forced them to try to defend his role as DPP and on the sentencing council. Something they have not done well so far.”
But what is clear is Starmer has got his boots on after a wobbly start to the year. He tried to play the older and wiser man at PMQs, talking down to the new boy, but that tactic has not really landed a blow.
Down in the gutter
So instead Labour have got down in the gutter and are pummelling.
They know Sunak is more popular than his party, so are determined to make the PM own the Tory baggage.
“Nice doesn’t win elections”, Team Starmer say, but the need to brief out how happy they were with the result of their Twitter ads showed a level of insecurity and only highlighted that many in Labour are not convinced this is the right strategy.
While some pollsters think the Tory brand is so tainted that whatever Sunak does, it is too late for voters hungry for a change of scene, the scale of the task facing Starmer cannot be underestimated.
He needs an extra 128 seats just to have a majority of one.
With the redrawing of constituencies later this year expected to boost the Tories by more than a dozen seats on top of their 70-strong majority, that is a mammoth task.
David Cameron could not manage to overturn an even smaller Labour majority in 2010 in one go, and the Tories had no majority by the time the landslide 1997 pummelling came along.
Something historic is going to happen at that election if a hung Parliament is to be avoided.
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Either the Tories win an unprecedented fifth straight term or Starmer achieves the biggest swing recorded in history.
Taken from that angle, a majority Labour government is looking like a shakier bet by the day.