Crying In The Rain

Ben Wildsmith

As Rishi Sunak stood outside Downing Street in the pouring rain to announce an election on July 4th, the optics matched his prospects.

Over fourteen years, the Conservative Party has lost its reputation, its credibility, its sanity, and its dignity. By the time Sunak assumed the helm, it was already listing in the water and beyond repair. It is a measure only of his vanity that this government has carried on so long.

The announcement was an admission that where we are now, with 0.6% growth shading us out of recession, and inflation somewhere within reason at last, is as good as it was going to get. This, it seems, is Sunak’s electoral happy place.

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Bad weather

Bad weather in the channel is stemming the arrival of wretched souls on the beaches of Kent for a while and that will have to do. In an inversion of Tony Blair’s theme song, things can only get worse. It’s time to cut and run.

The first-past-the-post system means that UK elections are only ever about a handful of constituencies and polls suggest that this time the Conservatives will retreat into the innermost ventricles of its heartlands.

Their campaign will be nothing to do with you. Money, grins, and slander will be expended on areas of England they have hitherto taken for granted as Central Office fights a rearguard action on behalf of MPs who believed their tenure to be for life.

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Disgrace

The cumulative horrors of Brexit, the Covid response, Boris Johnson’s disgrace, and Liz Truss’s disastrous farce, along with the financial pain they caused have left nearly every household in the country with a personal reason to vote the Tories out.

Many find their obsession with immigration to be immoral and cruel, but even those who share their sentiments are furious that they have failed to enact any of the measures they proposed. This is less an election than an expulsion.

Which is not to suggest any widespread enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. They may yet surprise us with a manifesto choc full of innovative solutions to the social ills blighting every village, town, and city in the country but, if so, they’ve done an unprecedented job in concealing them. More likely, we will be offered a programme of tinkering that leaves Brexit untouched and accepts austerity as principle of public finances.

There will be flags, oh my there will be more flags than you have ever seen. Neither Sunak nor Starmer will leave the house without a Union Flag to hand, and possibly draped around them to ward off the SNP.

The only variable at play is the size of Labour’s victory. With Reform UK’s Alf Garnett-fluffing shysters siphoning off some of the more distasteful Tory vote, it could be a majority that ends the Conservative Party as an electoral force.

Has it ever gone into an election that it couldn’t win? Not to my recollection, and such things tend to be habit-forming as the Liberals discovered after WW1.

With a Labour victory assured, it’s possible that some areas of the country feel emboldened to vote more creatively than usual. Here in Wales, many people are not currently very enthusiastic about Labour and this time, can’t rely on the coercive power of threatening us with a Tory government if we don’t vote for it.

There is a clear opportunity for an election in Wales that is defined entirely differently from the one going on over the border. Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, and even Reform UK could harness local grievance here much more effectively than they might in a tighter national race. It will be interesting to see which of these rises to the challenge.

With Labour poised to control the Senedd and Westminster, many voters might see a clear advantage in sending a message that, for once, we aren’t to be taken for granted. It is allowed, you know.