LONDON — Rishi Sunak was in the middle of an announcement It is an election that is likely to be lost in such a country often feels like it’s falling apart.
Then – in an apt metaphor for besieged England and his the ruling Conservative Party — The Prime Minister was swept away in the middle of his speech and choked to death by a nearby protester who blasted the song. “Everything can only get better.”
Sunak began a six-week campaign after calling a snap election for Thursday, July 4. He and his party are not very popular among the public. per basic requestso unless there is an unprecedented turn of fortune, they will be disqualified.
The Tories are blamed by many for Britain’s decline.
Real wages have been stagnant for over a decade; healthcare queues and home prices are rising; sewage is pumped into rivers and the sea; dysfunction destroys everything from the nation’s railroads to its prisons; and Brexit – once the Conservative claim célèbre – now widely considered such a failure which most politicians prefer not to discuss at all.
According to election law, Sunak had to schedule the vote at some point this year. Despite this, his decision to act immediately – while his party was weakening a whopping 20 points behind the opposition Labor Party – has deeply angered many MPs, who now face a landslide that will put many of them out of office.
Many observers are wondering: why now?
“Rishi Sunak deployed the only weapon left in his arsenal: the element of surprise,” said Guto Harry, director of communications former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who served as finance minister in Sunak’s administration, before the pair became rivals. “At least the starter fired the gun on his own terms and showed he had the backbone to proactively go for it.”
But even the prime minister’s traditional allies felt that Sunak might have sounded the last bell of the Conservatives’ 14-year rule.
Conservative audience magazine “The Deluge” splashed across the front pagealong with a cartoon of a rain-soaked Sunak and a cover story about his “election gamble”.
Right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph went with it: “Things Can Get Only Wetter”, a reference to the 1990s British dance classic.
It was the song played by demonstrators at the gates of 10 Downing Street, who threatened to drown out Sunak’s address. His choice was multi-layered; it was also the soundtrack to Tony Blair’s successful election campaign in 1997 – the last time Labor ousted the Conservatives from government.
Electoral history is certainly full of upheavals, but no party in the history of British politics has changed anything close to the existing electoral gulf so close to the vote.
The current picture is bleak for conservatives. But recent good news may mean this is really as good as it gets.
A few hours ago, it was announced that inflation had fallen to 2.3% from a 40-year high of 11% at the end of 2022, the worst in the developed world. (US inflation was 3.4% last month.)
That doesn’t mean prices are falling for voters Sunak will now sue the country for, just that they’re rising at a slower rate.
In that sense, Sunak “chose the moment when the promise of economic news is as good as it gets — without waiting to find out if the promise comes true,” Harry said.