A humiliating election speech, with little to offer. Sunak’s USP was competence – what of that now?

The circumstances were excruciating. One of the great rituals in any prime minister’s career – the one when they put it all on the line by calling an election – was instead drenched in rain and almost drowned out by horrible, hostile noise from Whitehall protesters. Rishi Sunak battled on, just about retaining his dignity, and one felt for him in his torment. Yet it was a nasty, low moment in British politics.

Never forget this, however. There is only one reason why a British prime minister would call a general election earlier than they have to, as Sunak did today. That is because they know better than anyone else that things are going to get worse later.

Almost all British prime ministers love the job. They stay in it as long as they dare, and sometimes stay longer than they should. Sunak has done the same. The ability to decide the election date, which prime ministers briefly gave up in 2011 but which Boris Johnson reclaimed in 2022, means they have to be very confident of victory in order to go early; giving up their power and patronage and risking their government and their party. This was most definitely not a luxury that Rishi Sunak enjoyed.

That is why his decision to call an election for 4 July tells us, as clearly as anything can say, that things would get worse – or perhaps, in this case, even worse – for the Conservatives in the autumn, which is when most of us had assumed until now that the election would actually be. Though the election might have been as late as January next year, most speculation was centred on early November.

Now, though, Sunak has committed to an early election and a six-week campaign. He has taken the Westminster bubble by surprise, which may give him some spiteful pleasure. There was no real sign of this coming in recent days, though it is inconceivable that it was a decision made on impulse. It must have been discussed and strategised inside No 10 for weeks.

Still, no journalist insider got the story that burst on us this afternoon, reminding all journalists of how little we sometimes know. Sunak’s decision eclipsed even Paula Vennells’ evidence to the Post Office inquiry taking place up the road. In retrospect, perhaps the extraordinarily brave reappearance of the Thanet South MP, Craig Mackinlay, in the House of Commons on Wednesday after his quadruple amputation was a sign that a chapter in parliamentary life was drawing to a close.

What will Sunak have accepted would get worse, as the months dragged on? Certainly the polling, which will have told him the country wants the whole thing over with. Probably the economy, in spite of this week’s decent dip in the UK inflation rate, and, most important of all, the electorate’s economic confidence. Perhaps Sunak had also been told that the much-vaunted Rwanda deportation scheme would not get started in time either.

Even so, the early election decision means that Sunak has given up the chance to play the few remaining cards that some Tories hoped would still help the party. So there will be no mini-budget in early September, which some had seen as the last roll of the dice. There will be no further cuts in taxes or national insurance contributions either. If there are interest rate cuts, which there may be in June, they will come too late, and will probably be too small to turn the mood around. There will be few chances to command the international stage either.

All this is not just some off-the-top-of-the-head piece of instant punditry on my part. It’s also what the boffins say. The chief boffin on this particular issue is Alastair Smith of New York University. He is the author of Election Timing, which he describes as “an informational theory of endogenous election timing in parliamentary systems”. His book is satisfyingly full of equations and graphs. But it boils down to one stark conclusion: “Governments call early elections when they anticipate future policy failures.”

In Sunak’s case, the fact that he has now taken just such a decision stands in stark contradiction to much of what was supposed to be his special skill. Sunak’s unique selling point, in the months after the Johnson shambles and the Liz Truss catastrophe, was that he was competent. His cool head and practical good sense were supposed to give the Conservative party its best – or perhaps that should read “its least worst” – shot at avoiding catastrophe.

Indeed, that was the main reason why most of us assumed, when it came to election timing, that Sunak would “go long”. He became prime minister in October 2022, the third of the year, and shortly after the death of the Queen. There were 27 months of the parliament still to run. If he was a dazzling success, he might even turn things round. Even if he was merely adequate, he might save enough seats for the Tories to survive respectably at the election.

Right now, though, it does not look like that for the Conservatives. The national polling for the Tories is very bad in most parts of the country. The local elections three weeks ago saw a nationwide spate of tactical voting for the candidates best placed to oust them. Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and independents all prospered. Watch for something very similar in July.

Sunak goes into this election with relatively little to offer voters from the five pledges on which he has campaigned for the past 18 months. The exception is his claim that inflation has fallen back to normal, but this only means it is back to where it was before Truss. His beleaguered announcement in the SW1 rain focused on warning voters that they can’t trust Keir Starmer. It tells you a lot that Sunak’s manifesto will be scrutinised as much for its impact on the party’s post-Sunak direction as for its credibility as a programme for government.

July elections are very unusual for Britain. This one has had to be squeezed in before the English school holidays. Scotland’s schools will be on holiday already, which is unlikely to have weighed with Sunak. Universities will mostly have dispersed, and Sunak may have been attracted by that. The election falls in the first week of Wimbledon, well after Ascot and midway through the Euros.

There has, though, been one July general election in modern British political history. It took place on 5 July 1945. It was an election that many assumed would produce a Conservative victory. Instead, it ended in probably the most iconic Labour landslide win of the 20th century, with Clement Attlee leading his party to a 145-seat majority over Winston Churchill’s Tories. Walking bravely back into Downing Street in the pouring rain today, Sunak may even have wondered if he, too, could turn the tables. After 14 years of Conservative-led government, that already seems deeply unlikely.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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