If 2023 was the year British politics got stuck in traffic, 2024 should be the year it gets moving again. <\/p>\n
At some point in the next 12 months, it is expected that the\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0will hold an election\u00a0some would argue\u00a0<\/strong>is long overdue. <\/p>\n Not constitutionally overdue: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not obliged to call an election until 17 December 2024, exactly five years since the last one took place. <\/p>\n Overdue in the sense that the incumbent Conservative government\u2019s mandate \u2013 won in 2019 on Boris Johnson\u2019s optimistic, pre-Covid, post-Brexit platform \u2013 belongs to a different decade. <\/p>\n The UK is going through a difficult patch. <\/p>\n There is a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation and interest rates are very high\u00a0by comparison with any period of time in the past decade. Public services,\u00a0already struggling to keep up with demand, have been\u00a0stretched further by rising costs and strike action, leading to longer waits for hospital treatment. <\/p>\n There\u00a0is a\u00a0shortage\u00a0of affordable housing\u00a0and\u00a0frequent\u00a0strikes\u00a0disrupt rail services.\u00a0And all of this is happening at a time when the tax burden is historically high. <\/p>\n Many of these problems were inherited by Sunak when he took over from Liz Truss in\u00a0October\u00a02022. Since coming into office, Sunak\u2019s primary objective has been to steady the ship after his two predecessors, Truss and Johnson before her, oversaw such chaotic governments that they were both forced from office as Conservative polling numbers fell through the floor. <\/p>\n Sunak has since done his best to patch the hole in his sinking ship. But, more often than not, he and his government look stuck between a rock and a hard place. <\/p>\n Politically, Sunak is in an undesirable position. The biggest threat to his authority comes from the right of his own base \u2013 both within the party and among right-wing voters.\u00a0Their key concerns include\u00a0immigration (net migration for 2022 was upgraded by the Office for National Statistics to a\u00a0record high of 745,000 in November),\u00a0so-called\u00a0culture wars\u00a0issues\u00a0and any perceived betrayal of the Brexit vote in 2016. <\/p>\n He is blamed by many in his party for the political assassination of Johnson. Sunak served as Johnson\u2019s\u00a0chancellor (finance minister) from February 2020 to July 2022. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was a key part of Johnson\u2019s crisis government and was at times lauded for the financial support he provided businesses and individuals during the\u00a0toughest\u00a0periods of lockdown. <\/p>\n However, the overlapping scandals of Johnson\u2019s government \u2013 ranging from breaking his own Covid rules to appointing a key ally known for sexual harassment \u2013 made Johnson too toxic for Sunak,\u00a0leading him to step down in July 2022. <\/p>\n Sunak\u2019s resignation\u00a0\u2013 which was followed by a string of others \u2013\u00a0was seen by ultra-committed\u00a0Johnson allies as the defining moment in his downfall. They have never forgiven Sunak for his betrayal. <\/p>\n Johnson\u2019s exit from office created an acute division in the Conservative Party. Johnson is widely seen as both the architect and deliverer of Brexit, making him the champion of the Conservative right. <\/p>\n Even though Sunak is, in many ways, to the right of Johnson, his perceived treachery means loyal Johnsonites will never trust him. <\/p>\n This has created a headache for Sunak, who must simultaneously appease the right of the party with red-meat policy while also presenting to the wider public as the anti-Johnson: a sensible, calm, technocratic leader stabilizing the country during difficult times. <\/p>\n Sunak has refused to cut taxes and fostered friendlier relations with the European Union \u2013 unpopular with the right of his party \u2013 while also pushing back green policies and making lots of noise on culture war issues like immigration and trans rights. <\/p>\n His impossible balancing act is perhaps best illustrated by two decisions he made this autumn. In October, Sunak junked HS2, a high-speed rail project connecting the north and south\u00a0of England\u00a0that was\u00a0signed off\u00a0under former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. This decision was taken to appease some on the right of the party who saw it as an unnecessary waste of money that Cameron should have never introduced. <\/p>\n Weeks later, Cameron \u2013 a liberal reformer who led the campaign against Brexit \u2013 was appointed as Sunak\u2019s new foreign secretary, to the dismay of many on the party\u2019s right. An unfriendly headline in the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph newspaper recently read: \u201cDavid Cameron\u2019s return has put the pro-EU, anti-Israel\u00a0blob\u00a0back in charge.\u201d <\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just right-wing media commentators who are publicly laying into Sunak and his government. <\/p>\n Johnson himself has recently started a weekly column in the Daily Mail newspaper, from which he has lobbed grenades at his successor. The firebrand Brexiteer Nigel Farage has a daily TV show in which he rages about immigration and Brexit. One of Johnson\u2019s biggest allies, former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, has written a book all about the apparent plot to remove Johnson from office, in which she claims Sunak had a starring role. <\/p>\n It\u2019s here that we come back to the election and the fact that it is overdue. <\/p>\n All the issues described above can in some way be filed under \u201cparty management.\u201d So much of what Sunak and his government spend their time talking about seems to be aimed at a very small audience of Conservative MPs and party members. It often feels that niche issues are driving the political narrative in a country that has bigger and more important things to be worrying about. <\/p>\n And for all the energy \u2013 and even moderate successes of Sunak\u2019s premiership to date \u2013\u00a0the polls have barely budged, with the Conservatives still trailing the opposition Labour Party by\u00a0double digits.\u00a0Which raises the question:\u00a0Why is Sunak,\u00a0the third Conservative prime minister since the last election, \u00adwaiting to give the public a say? <\/p>\n Allies of the prime minister point out that the UK does not elect leaders, but MPs whose parties can form governments. Parliaments are then typically given five years to get on with governing. But a lot has happened in\u00a0the past\u00a0five years and, with the best will in the world, it is hard to argue that Johnson\u2019s election manifesto of 2019 is the basis on which Sunak is currently governing. <\/p>\n One likely reason for the delay is that Sunak is waiting to see if his polling numbers improve. Pro-Sunak moderate Conservatives support this even if they think they are ultimately fated to lose the next election. <\/p>\n Sunak is quite within his rights to hang on until the last minute. Who knows, he might even turn around those polling numbers and pull off an improbable win. <\/p>\n Whenever it happens and whatever the outcome, it does feel like Groundhog Day in the UK\u00a0as the Conservative Party once again is embroiled in turmoil.\u00a0There is an argument that a break from the rollercoaster of Brexit, Covid and Johnson is a good thing. <\/p>\n But 2019 really does feel like a long time ago, and it\u2019s hard to find anyone who can make a coherent argument that the public should be denied a say in how they are governed for\u00a0very\u00a0much longer. <\/p>\n\n If 2023 was the year British politics got stuck in traffic, 2024 should be the year it gets moving again. At some point in the next 12 months, it is expected that the\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0will hold an election\u00a0some would argue\u00a0is long overdue. Not constitutionally overdue: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not obliged to call an election <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Balancing act<\/h2>\n
Biding time<\/h2>\n