Month: May 2024

Another good week for Labour…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

There is so much to write about… The ANC has lost its majority in South Africa and Trump has been criminally convicted on all 34 accounts in the hush-money case. More on the latter topic next week when I am based in New York for a few days. I can’t wait!

Now to the General Election in the UK. It has been another good week for Labour which has extended its lead in several opinion polls. Despite indications that the public likes some of the Tories’ new policy ideas such as National Service, they are making no impact on the party’s fortunes. Why is this?

The electorate has simply made up its mind. It is time for a change, and it would have to be a truly momentous incident for this settled view to be revised. Sunak is campaigning like an underdog opposition leader bouncing around with new ideas to try and attract attention. Starmer, meanwhile, is saying very little and campaigning more like a prime minister. Very wise and the contrast in styles has not escaped the notice of voters to Starmer’s benefit.

Looking and sounding tough on the hard left whilst reinstating Diane Abbott…

Of course there will be bumps in the road for Labour but one of them is not the row over whether Diane Abbott should be a formal Labour candidate or not. Actually, it has just been announced she can stand as an official Labour candidate in her constituency. A not very insightful column from Stephen Bush of the FT suggests all this brutal factionalism is showing Labour’s not very nice, machine politics side. Nonsense.

Labour has always been criticised for being too nice, not ruthless enough. Hence the Tories’ never-ending election success. The deselection of Corbyn and the row over the suspension and reinstatement of Diane Abbott just shines a light on how tough Starmer has been in clearing out the hard left. It reinforces the narrative that Labour has changed under Starmer, and nothing will get in the way of it attaining power. In other wording, despite whinging from the sidelines by a few journalists and Labour activists, Starmer emerges stronger from all this.

So far, the election campaign has been thoroughly boring. Only the TV debates and the last few anxious days in the run-up to election day will liven things up. In the meantime, round 2 to Labour.

Tory Party continues to wrongfoot itself…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

I was a parliamentary assessor in 2017 when Theresa May called a snap election. Many seats did not have Tory candidates and we worked round the clock to get them selected, preparing for the landslide that never materialised. The lack of preparedness was understandable when an election was not due until 2020 and Mrs May had categorically ruled out an election until that walking holiday in Wales changed her mind…

But there is no excuse this time. There was always going to be an election this year so how come the Tory Party apparently has no candidates in place in 150 seats? Crazy. Of course there are always safe seats which become vacant at the last minute which is very helpful to drop in well-connected, favoured Party stars but the Tory Party essentially starts this campaign with about a third of seats unfilled. Hopeless. It shows there is a fundamental disconnect between No. 10 and the Party organisation.

Then the National Service announcement, already being watered-down. This policy is not without merit but it sums up the Tories’ problems of being in office. If it is such a good idea, why wasn’t it thought of earlier? It has surprised the Tory troops trying to get a grip of the detail. And we know how well that goes down. Just ask Theresa May about the social care policy dropped on a surprised Cabinet at the start of her 2017 campaign.

A decent man all at sea…

Starmer sounds confident, the Labour campaign appears slick, the LibDems are buzzing around Surrey and the South West. Gove, Leadsom, Redwood, all Brexiteer anarchists leaving a mess behind them, have jumped ship. Sunak sits in pubs but does not drink, breakfasts in cafes but does not eat and pops up in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast. What is he doing there FFS? There are no votes to be had in Northern Ireland.

Of course it could all change… at least a little. A 6 week campaign is a long time in politics… But, today, it is round 1 firmly to Labour.

Nice try, Rishi, but it won’t nearly be enough…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

You have to give it to Rishi. He is a political risk taker. Bringing back Cameron whilst pleading change, cancelling HS2 to Manchester when in… Manchester, getting the government off people’s backs whilst banning smoking. It has worked so well so far… not.

So now the big election gamble. He announced the date in the rain, looking faintly ridiculous whilst also really irritating his colleagues with the surprise. Speaking to some Tory MPs, their mood is furious as their careers are cut short by four months for no perceivable election advantage.

Meanwhile, Starmer stood in a dry room draped in the British flag, looking like a slightly dull but competent PM in waiting.

An inauspicious start…

And yet, and yet… you never know. Elections can be unpredictable. Just ask Theresa May. But this election feels different. After 14 years in government when the Conservative Party has often conducted itself disgracefully, the desire for change is palpable.

And, outside campaign surprises, what will be the main themes that will shape the election? They are straight forward. The debate will centre on that theme of change versus the devil you know but, sadly, for the Tories, not the benefits of their economic stewardship.

As Sky News explained clearly yesterday, despite falling inflation, prices are still rising, and the cost of living has risen 20% during Sunak’s premiership. It will take much longer than 4th July to feel any improvement. Just look at Biden’s languishing poll ratings in the US where, despite a booming economy, the longer-term impact of rising prices still dictates the political narrative. Unlike Sunak, however, who has just closed the door on this option, at least the President has until November to turn things around and see off his opponent.

The public is heartedly sick of the Tories, and it won’t be the credibility of Labour that is at stake but the credibility of the Tories. Against this background, Starmer will win. Only the scale of victory is in doubt.

P.S. We have just heard that no flights will take off to Rwanda before the election. The timing of the election just gets worse for the Tories…

In your dreams, Rishi…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

In The Times yesterday, surveying the wreckage of the local election results, Rishi Sunak was quoted as saying Britain was heading for a hung parliament at the general election with a Labour government having to be propped up by smaller parties. Nice try, Rishi, but you have got to be joking…

It could barely have been worse for the Tories…

The results were a disaster for the Tories. The fact that Labour only got 34% of the vote is irrelevant, being obscured by all sorts of local factors that won’t be repeated at a general election. Labour won almost everywhere they had to, often very comfortably and the LibDems and Greens had good results too. What was remarkable is that Labour, in particular, for the first time in a generation, are distributing their votes efficiently rather than simply piling them up in inner cities where they were already doing well. That is a very, very bad omen for the Tories.

The clear message is that most voters are heartedly sick of the Tories and will go to any lengths to get rid of them. It really doesn’t matter how relatively unpopular Starmer is versus Blair in his hey day. It is time for a change and the huge anti-Tory coalition will swing into place ruthlessly in the Autumn voting tactically to wreak the most damage; LibDems in the South/South West and Labour everywhere else including Scotland which of course wasn’t voting last week. Reform UK will undercut the Tories from the Right, everyone else from the Left. Oh dear indeed…

This blog currently predicts not a hung parliament but a Tory wipe-out. They will be lucky to survive with a 150 seats.

And only some while after the next election will the Tories get interesting again. Every government needs a decent opposition and Labour with an inherited economic mess and no clear mandate in terms of policy commitments will quickly become unpopular. There may at least be some curiosity about what lessons the Tories have learnt from their defenestration.

The problem is that, today, there are very few indications from leading Tories they will learn anything. With rumours of a Johnson/Farage realignment of the Right of politics using the vehicle of a hugely weakened Tory Party a year or too hence, with good moderate Tories going/gone (the former West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, being one of these) and the existing left of the Tory Party seemingly (self) defeated, the Labour Party regardless of their competence may be in power for a very long time.

Time for a new centre-right party you might think. Well, however laudable, we have been here before and it seems as likely as one of Sunak’s unintended jokes about a hung parliament.