Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
“My centre is yielding. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I’m attacking.”
Those gung-ho words are attributed to Ferdinand Foch, the French general who halted the German advance in 1914. Whether he actually said them is open to question. They certainly make him sound borderline insane.
Which is probably why they came to mind last week, when a rain-sodden Rishi Sunak called the election. Of course, the comparison is deeply unfair… to Foch, that is. You see, there was method to the Frenchman’s madness. The reason why his centre was yielding and his right retreating is that the invading Germans were pushing too far, too fast. Foch spotted a weakness and his counter-attack changed the course of the war. It would take four years in the trenches before the enemy surrendered, but it was in 1914 that Paris was saved and therefore France and therefore the West.
Unfortunately, tactical brilliance is not a term as readily associated with Team Sunak. We’ll never know for sure whether delaying the election until the autumn would have been the better option. But events thus far have hardly confounded my instincts on the matter – nor, reportedly, those of campaign supremo, Isaac Levido.
For a start, you don’t call an election when you’re twenty points behind – not if you don’t have to. But if you do press the button early, you’d better be prepared – and, thus far, Tory high command have given every impression of being surprised by their own surprise announcement.
There’s no need to recap the gory details of the last few days. Almost as much ink has been spilled on the subject as raindrops on the Prime Minister’s expensive suit. But we do need to know why the launch was so catastrophically mishandled. Unlike the farce of the 2017 snap election – after which the post-mortem was limited to the singling out of scapegoats – the next leader needs to get to the heart of the party’s dysfunction.
What we can say for now is that the decision caught almost everyone on the hop. The bombshell was no respecter of seniority. Cabinet ministers were summoned at short notice. The Foreign Secretary was virtually yanked off a plane en route to Albania. And as for the Deputy Prime Minister’s disaster preparedness event, surely that wouldn’t have gone ahead if he’d known what was coming.
There’s no doubt that backbenchers were blindsided. One only has to read statements from people like Tracey Crouch and Craig Mackinlay to understand how unexpected it was. As shock and dismay rippled through the ranks, MPs weighing-up whether or not to continue were stampeded into decisions – thus guaranteeing the campaign would start with a demoralising exodus. In a sane world, all of this would have been sorted months ago, thus giving new candidates a decent run-up.
As it is, we’re now scrambling to select candidates before nominations close – unlike Labour who’ve made most of their selections. Remarkably, for a government elected with a majority of 80 in 2019, it is the Opposition that goes into this election with an incumbency advantage.
The cost of going early and unprepared does not end there. For instance, legislation has been lost – including the cigarette ban. Whether you agree with this measure or not, it was meant to leave a lasting legacy. I would say something about the Prime Minister’s policy agenda going up in smoke, but to be honest it’s more of a wisp.
Has anything substantial been lost? On the international stage, most certainly. On the 9th of July (after election day) there’s the NATO summit in Washington DC. The occasion marks the alliance’s 75th anniversary – and an absolutely pivotal moment for its future. A week later, the UK is hosting a meeting of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace; another opportunity for British leadership in a time of peril.
Quite apart from their diplomatic importance, these events could have allowed Sunak to shine in advance of an autumn election, which, given CCHQ’s desire to run a presidential-style campaign, is a wasted opportunity. Oh, and let’s not forget the groundbreaking CPTPP trade agreement, which is due to come into force in the next few months, something else that might have made a helpful background for a later campaign.
Ah, but what about the bad things that might have happened over the summer and into the autumn? It’s here that we come to the ostensible justifications for the July election date.
The political editor of Times Radio, Kate McCann, asked a “senior member of Team Sunak” about the timing of the election. This was the answer she got: “Things have started to go wrong… that’s going to keep happening. You don’t want to be sat there in Downing Street all summer while they do”. But what “things” are we talking about? Further court-enforced delays to the Rwanda scheme? The bankruptcy of at least one water company? The financial implosion of our ropiest universities?
Instead of a premature election or just “sitting there in Downing Street”, the appropriate response is to never let a good crisis go to waste. An effective government would take back control of immigration policy, recalling Parliament to put the voters, not the judiciary, in charge of our borders.
As for those utilities and universities, if they go belly-up then that’s a moment to draw a dividing line between Conservative governance and parasitical vested interests. It’s time that we stopped taking the heat for rent-seeking institutions in the public and private sectors. Let Labour defend the failing status quo, we should be the party of structural change.
But of course that’s not Sunak’s style. He is the basic Prime Minister whose ambitions are limited to his five priorities: halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting waiting lists, and stopping the boats. Progress towards these objectives is mixed, but in aggregate we’re supposedly in the best position we’re likely to reach this year. That’s the reason for going to the country now, before any inconvenient blips on inflation, and so forth.
The five promises were always going to leave the election timetable at the mercy of temporary ups and downs in the corresponding indicators. A government should always anchor its narrative to announcements of action, not to a sequence of statistical releases. In defining his credibility the wrong way, Sunak has painted himself into a corner.
After the worst possible start to the campaign, things may get better. The national service policy has, if nothing else, changed the media narrative. At least one opinion poll shows a narrowing of the gap with Labour. One would hope that, as the country contemplates the prospect of a Starmer super-majority and no opposition, the gap will narrow further. But if that does happen, don’t give the credit to last week’s big call.
It would have been wiser to subject Starmer to months of scrutiny, not weeks. Unlike the Germans in 1914, Labour has not advanced with undue haste. They’ve moved with the utmost caution, leaving no flank exposed. The early election suits them down to the ground; not only because they’ve prepared for it, but because it limits the time in which they might make a mistake or in which the Conservative leadership might finally do something that works.