Analysis
Rishi Sunak’s chances were always slim. And the
numbers just get worse
Robert Ford
Polls show
longstanding Tory advantages on issues such as immigration, crime and defence
are gone, while Labour opens new leads in traditional areas
Sat 8 Jun
2024 17.54 BST
Was this
the week the wheels came off for Rishi Sunak? After two weeks of campaigning
for “a clear plan of bold action for a secure future” the verdict in the polls
is clear: voters don’t like his clear plan, they don’t want his bold actions,
and they believe their future will be more secure without him. All of this was
true even before the prime minister’s calamitous Thursday afternoon decision to
leave D-day commemorations early for a pre-recorded media interview.
Make no
mistake: the Conservatives are now staring down the barrel. Their campaign is
failing on every front, with precious little time left. Voters are making their
minds up, and what the prime minister offers is not what they want.
A key theme
of every recent Conservative campaign has been to build up the leader and sow
doubts about their opponent. But a leader-focused approach only makes sense if
voters like your leader, or at least prefer them to the alternative. The prime
minister’s three Tory predecessors all started their campaigns ahead, giving
them an advantage to try to press home.
Sunak has
no such advantage. His leader approvals at the start of the campaign are among
the worst ever recorded – as bad as Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, or Gordon Brown in
the depths of the financial crisis. His campaign trail choices have not
improved things. Keir Starmer may not set hearts racing, but running against
such an opponent he does not have to. Starmer began this campaign with the same
leader ratings advantage as Tony Blair had over John Major in 1997.
The
campaign to date has not changed this picture, as Opinium’s regular questions
on leadership qualities confirm. Keir Starmer gets no stellar ratings, but he
still outshines Rishi Sunak’s dreadful ratings on every quality from being in
touch to likability and competence.
Governments
can also run on their records. We see this in the Conservatives’ promotion of
their “bold actions” on Covid furlough, energy prices, pensions and taxes on
the campaign trail, and in debates. Framing a campaign around past successes
can be a smart strategy when voters credit you for performing well. The problem
for Sunak is that his party’s reputation is now battered, and voters give his
government poor marks across the board.
The polling
verdict on the outgoing government is damning. More than six in every 10 voters
think the government has performed badly on every single issue except defence
and security – and Sunak’s blunders last week will probably cloud that one
remaining bright spot. Voters give the government even worse marks on the
issues they care about most, with 80 or 90% giving them a fail grade on the
issues that matter most to them.
Other
polling paints a similar picture – more than four-fifths of voters polled by
Ipsos last week are dissatisfied with the way the government is running the
country (83%), and two-thirds do not think the Conservatives deserve to be
re-elected (67%). Both of these figures are the highest recorded since Sunak
took charge.
The bad
news doesn’t stop there. In campaigns, established parties can typically lean
into brand advantages, drawing on long-established strengths. Not this time.
Sunak’s Tories now trail Labour on every single issue in the most recent YouGov
polling. Longstanding Tory advantages in areas such as immigration, crime and
defence are gone, while Labour have opened up towering leads in traditional
areas of strength such as health, education and housing. Crucially, Labour have
opened up a lead on the economy, overturning an advantage the Conservatives
held even in the 1997 landslide defeat. The legacy of Liz Truss cuts deep.
If voters
don’t like the past, get them to look to the future. No wonder, then, that the
Tory campaign has showered us with eyecatching new pledges and policies. While
the new policies poll well in isolation, they haven’t changed the electoral
weather. The problem once again is reputation. Voters who feel the government
has failed on everything don’t trust Sunak or his party to deliver anything
new. A new restaurant can produce an eyecatching menu, but it won’t succeed if
the chef has health and safety violations and there’s a fire in the kitchen.
The Tory
policy barrage was perhaps not expected to turn around fortunes across the
board. The goal was narrower: win back disaffected Brexiters tempted by Reform
UK. Announcements such as national service and the pensions “triple lock plus”
were supposed to secure the right flank, even at the risk of further alienating
moderate swing voters. Nigel Farage sent that strategy to the seabed on Monday
when he returned as Reform UK leader.
The
Conservatives cannot hope to out-Farage Farage – the Reform curious who
distrust Rishi adore Nigel, who can trump any red meat offered by the Tory
campaign with a bigger, juicier steak of his own. The Tories have wasted two
precious weeks trying to see off a revolt on the right which is now all but
guaranteed to hit them hard. Farage is certain to hurt the Conservatives. The
only question is how badly.
Many of
these disadvantages were baked in long ago. This was always going to be a
campaign against the odds. Yet Sunak seems determined to make things worse with
a campaign full of dubious claims and political pratfalls. This week’s Opinium
poll for the Observer only adds to the bad news, with growing Labour leads on
the biggest issues and more than half of voters saying the Tories had a bad
week. Four in 10 of those polled said they thought it would be a good thing if
the coming election entirely obliterated the Conservatives, as happened to
their Canadian cousins in 1993, going from a majority to just two seats.
Such voters
may yet get their wish. Two weeks in, the dial has shifted from likely defeat
to looming disaster. An electoral asteroid is streaking through the British
atmosphere. Impact in the Tory heartlands is just weeks away. Brace, brace.
Robert Ford
is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The
British General Election of 2019
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