It was going to be May and now it isn’t. But it could be June – perhaps. This week, the buzz among some of the fractious Tory MPs heading off for the Easter break is that only a June vote can cauterise the haemorrhaging of Tory support, and curtail the noxious drip of Tory supporters and ancien regime figures calling for Rishi Sunak to go.
Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary and one of the few Sunak loyalists to have been an MP continuously since 2005, has just told George Osborne and Ed Balls’ Political Currency podcast that he thinks a mid-to-late November poll is more likely, while claiming that he has “no inside information” – which is a bit like the Pope saying that he has no particular view on theology.
This fungible election date is mainly a sign of how reactive and panicky Conservative MPs have become. Critics on the outer edges of the hardline Eurosceptic faction such as Andrea Jenkyns have doubled down on the “why not?” school of thought on ditching Sunak.
This may not be fatal to the Prime Minister, but the unease in the Tory ranks also indicates that the PM has had difficulty repelling this mood – something his friends tell me he is “aware of and thinking hard about” as he takes a short bank holiday break.
One reason the June option has moved into the news is that it is the last window before the summer when politicians can decently bother the public with a trek to the polls. It is a short enough run-up to tweak some announcements and shoehorn in what the Chancellor calls a “fiscal event” (AKA a pre-election budget which provides a clearer tax dividing line with Labour), but long enough – just – to plan a campaign and hit Labour areas of weakness still being worked through by Sir Keir Starmer.
But the main reason why some Number 10 sources are flirting with this idea is, to invert the Tony Blair-era pop song dictum, that many MPs and departing ministers are warning that “things can only get worse”.
The departure this week of two ministers in a single day – Armed Forces minister James Heappey and Skills minister Robert Halfon, a personable figure in the Commons – brings the total of MPs announcing they are quitting to just under 100.
The party is trailing badly in the polls and hoped that a national insurance tweak in the recent budget would be received with more gratitude than has turned out to be the case. The local elections on 2 May are likely to be painful.
It hardly takes a genius to figure out that this feels like a tide going out. So when the PM speaks to Red Wall figures including his down-to-earth party chairman Richard Holden, the message, as one MP in a seat predicted to swing heavily back to Labour puts it, is: “Give us more to work with.”
An earlier vote would however test Labour’s vague message and election battle readiness. Rachel Reeves’ recent Mais lecture emboldened her fan base, but left some pretty big holes around the trade-offs and risks the Opposition will propose to cure the UK’s slew of economic and investment problems.
Therefore, the argument for June goes, an earlier poll would galvanise Conservatives around their targets – voters who have not made up their minds, or who can be “tipped” back from sort-of liking Labour to seeing the downsides and risks of a change.
Underlying this is also a less flattering message for Sunak, namely that time is running out to make him and his personal brand the answer to Tory woes.
Voters don’t get his message or personal appeal – however many interviews he gives (with genuine feeling) about his family values and missing his kids when he overworks, which is most of the time.
So the clearer prospect is a campaign built around a modest economic revival and a tax-cutting budget, rather than the leader himself. That also gives the party more time to take credit for any decreases to inflation – and to concoct a clever budget to test Labour’s plans.
My own view is more Gove-ian than the present “summer push” enthusiasm. Jeremy Hunt’s last budget felt like a warm-up and even he has let slip that an autumn budget is a “working assumption”. Hunt is a gradualist who finetooth-combs figures, not a Chancellor likely to bound into the prime ministerial flat next door waving a plan for a fast tax-lowering mini-Budget in just over two months.
October might be a good bet. I doubt it will be the week of the US election on 5 November, because a possible Trump return would dominate the news agenda. December is a gamble taken by Boris Johnson successfully in his prime in 2019, but most governments are loath to bother pre-Christmas shoppers with voting.
There is also one other warning from history over the “go soon in June” school of thought. It was the gamble that cost Theresa May her overall majority and effectively ended her authority as Tory leader. That is hardly the playbook Sunak hankers to follow.
His bigger problem, as he returns from catching his breath at Easter to a party flirting with the desperado option of ditching him, is not when the election is. It is what he believes it should be about – and how to fill that hole in the bleak spring Tory soul.
Anne McElvoy presents the Power Play podcast for POLITICO
Why some Tory MPs are eyeing a June election
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28.03.2024
It was going to be May and now it isn’t. But it could be June – perhaps. This week, the buzz among some of the fractious Tory MPs heading off for the Easter break is that only a June vote can cauterise the haemorrhaging of Tory support, and curtail the noxious drip of Tory supporters and ancien regime figures calling for Rishi Sunak to go.
Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary and one of the few Sunak loyalists to have been an MP continuously since 2005, has just told George Osborne and Ed Balls’ Political Currency podcast that he thinks a mid-to-late November poll is more likely, while claiming that he has “no inside information” – which is a bit like the Pope saying that he has no particular view on theology.
This fungible election date is mainly a sign of how reactive and panicky Conservative MPs have become. Critics on the outer edges of the hardline Eurosceptic faction such as Andrea Jenkyns have doubled down on the “why not?” school of thought on ditching Sunak.
This may not be fatal to the Prime Minister, but the unease in the Tory ranks also indicates that the PM has had difficulty repelling this mood – something his friends tell me he is “aware of and thinking hard about” as he takes a short bank holiday break.
One reason the June option has moved........
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