Is this why he called it now?
An excellent new podcast gave me thought of a possible reason for Sunak's timing
Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election earlier than he had to, when his party is more than 20 points down in the polls (and on a downward trajectory) has left people baffled. There even breathless reports that some of the Conservative MPs are plotting to try to ‘uncall’ the election (I seriously doubt this will happen). So the question is - why would Sunak do this?
Lots of people are trying for a fairly straightforward human explanation: he’s tired. He’s given up. But that feels insufficient. Sunak is definitively somebody who can read data, at ease with numbers. He must have known for some time that his chances of winning any election were minimal: no government, ever, has overcome such a polling lead in the time left of his term. It would be easy just to say “he’s a squillionaire, it doesn’t matter to him, he’ll get a tech job in California” but that on its own probably isn’t the only thing he cares about. Legacy, when you’re a less than one term Prime Minister who will probably lose an election is a complex idea, but it must still be important to him.
After the election the Tories will have a big fight on their hands over whether the surviving MPs lean into the hard-right populist nativism epitomised by Suella Braverman or something that is still just about in the mainstream. Sunak has pandered to the harder right elements in his party but it’s pretty clear that he’s more comfortable closer to the centre (I would’t overdo this: he is just a bit closer to the centre). And this is where the new podcast Quiet Riot offered a valuable insight. On it, panelist Luke Tryl explained that with a surprise election announcement and many Conservative MPs standing down, but the candidates for the coming election not yet all selected, the job of selection passes to the party leadership rather than the local party. This offers considerable power for Sunak to shape the future of his party by selecting candidates that match his outlook and ideology.
Had Sunak waited until October or even January he would not have had that power and the party activists would have picked candidates far more likely to be on the Braverman wing of the party. So perhaps the choice of date is the first round in the post-election battle for the future of the party.
You’re right to emphasise that he’s a relative centrist. Sunak is a long way to the right of people like Chris Patten, Ian Gilmour and Ian Macleod. But he’d do his party an immense service if he could keep it out of the hands of Braverman, Kruger et al
I think the question is less “why now?” and more “why didn’t he do it in May” An October/November election was always the worst option. With the risk of multiple water providers close to collapse, a really uncertain inflation landscape, a summer of small boats and straight into a US election, the Autumn is very likely to be the worst time this year to have an election. It’s highly likely he wouldn’t even make it that far.
May was the best chance he had and he blew it