The Budget will be the Government’s last major set-piece opportunity before the next general election. The Treasury announced during the Christmas period that it will take place on March 6. Labour claimed this as evidence that Rishi Sunak is planning a spring general election – doubtless to coincide with May’s local elections.
These may see two jewels in the Tory electoral crown plucked from it – the mayoraltys of Teesside and the West Midlands – alongside the further loss of Conservative councils and councillors. This would be a vulnerable springboard from which to leap into an autumn general election.
The summer may well see a recession set in and will certainly see a seasonal uptick in small boat arrivals. So, the argument goes, the Prime Minister would do best to plump for a spring poll, which may be what voters want anyway. This would also avoid entangling our general election with America’s presidential one, which may see a return match between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
A Trump run would be problematic for Sunak. Reform would contrast the former’s convention-busting style – especially if Trump looked like winning – with the latter’s mannerly approach. There are risks for the Prime Minister either way. Stick to his guns, and the noise from Nigel Farage would get louder. Abandon them, and the clamour from the left, claiming a Tory “lurch to the right” would intensify pari passu.
(Especially if the Rwanda scheme becomes the centre-piece of the Conservative election campaign, with Sunak declaring that he would defy an interim order from the European Court of Human Rights, and Tory candidates breaking from the offical line by going further, and declaring that Britain should leave the Convention altogether.)
Such is the case for a May general election. Here is the counter-case for the autumn. Britain may be in recession, but interest rates should be lower. So should inflation. And while the Government won’t have stopped the boats, it will have reduced their number, at least on present trends.
(The Prime Minister could try to make more of the fall, and of the returns deal with Albania, shifting his call to “stop the boats” to “cut the crossings and stop the boats”. This would at least have the virtue of trying to focus attention on a Government success rather than a Government failure.)
NHS waiting lists may also be down. Wages should be running ahead of inflation. Tax cuts in the Budget – assuming these happen – should have had time to bed in. So the merits for the Government of a spring or the autumn poll can be argued either way, if one believes that timing will make a difference to the result, which it may not.
The debate is complicated by the magnitude and uncertainty of events in the Middle East. To date, there has been no major economic knock-on of the kind that followed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of western Ukraine. But more attacks on shipping in the Red Sea would futher disrupt oil supplies and threaten higher prices.
The decisive factor is a simple one. The Conservatives are 18 points behind Labour in Politico’s poll of polls. Now imagine that the gap narrows to, say, ten points in the aftermath of the Budget. How likely is such a Tory recovery? Is it remotely conceivable – let alone a larger shift? And why would Sunak seek an election while even ten points behind in the polls?
But until or unless Downing Street rules a spring poll out, the lobby will press one of its favourite questions: namely, when will the next election take place? The longer Number Ten fails to declare, the more speculation there will be. And the more there is, the more cheerfully Labour will pile in – preparing to frame the Prime Minister as a ditherer if he waits until after March 6 to rule out a May poll.
The polarities of election timing risk are Theresa May and Gordon Brown. Do a May, and you seek an election while ahead in the polls with disastrous consequences, at least for you and your party. Do a Brown, and you fail to do so having suggested that you might – and be derided, mocked and lampooned. Remember “Bottler Brown“?
The most efficient means of killing the speculation stone dead would be for Sunak to say as early as this week that the election will take place on Thursday November 14, with an election campaign of just over a month beginning after the party conference season. The move would undoubtedly be “brave, Minister”. But the Prime Minister needs more than a touch of boldness to narrow the poll gap, let alone close it.