(Bloomberg) — Rishi Sunak‘s advisers had known for some time that he was unlikely to win the British general election. When they received internal polling this week confirming the prime minister was on course for a worst-case scenario, they privately accepted defeat and shifted their focus to ensuring the survival of the Conservative Party.
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This was evident from the Tories’ own analysis this week Keir StarmerThe Labor Party will achieve a historic victory in just 12 days, according to people familiar with the matter. The data predicts a result line with public opinion polls currently predicting a parliamentary majority as high as 200. A senior Conservative minister briefed on the figures said election night would resemble the Battle of the Somme, the First World War clash that began the bloodiest day ever for the British army.
The growing sense of foreboding was intensified by revelations that close associates of Sunak were placing bets on the July 4 election date, at a time when many in Sunak’s own cabinet were still in the dark about the plan. It was the kind of misstep – like the Prime Minister’s decision to walk away from the D-Day commemorations earlier this month – that resonated with the public and reinforced negative views of the Conservatives for not being focused on serving the public .
There are now growing concerns among Tory officials that Sunak’s own constituency of Richmond and Northallerton is no longer completely safe, after a poll suggested he could be the first serving prime minister in history to lose his seat. More than half the cabinet is at serious risk of being expelled from parliament, an outcome that would be unprecedented in British political history, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
That is why Conservative campaign headquarters decided on Wednesday to shift resources from the many seats currently held by Tories, with a majority of up to 10,000 voters, to areas previously considered completely safe. In a visible retreat to defend the party’s core areas, Sunak campaigned in two seats in rural Devon on Tuesday. Labor will respond by taking a more attacking stance in the final days of the ground campaign, driving activists into some Tory constituencies that the opposition previously thought had no chance of winning, party officials said.
Tory messaging will now focus on asking voters to ensure their party is a credible opposition to a Labor government. “If you think that somehow we might not win, it’s important that we are there to hold a future government to account,” Foreign Secretary David Cameron told farmers during that visit.
Where Tory campaign staff still hold out hope is that turnout among core Conservative voters on that day could surprise positively. The main reason for the large Labor majority in opinion polls is not that Starmer’s party has significantly increased its vote from the last election, but that there is extreme apathy among 2019 Conservative voters, a Tory aide has said .
“If it has to be the Labor Party with a huge landslide – 450,460 seats in our parliament out of a total of 650 – then what matters is that there is an effective opposition,” minister Mel Stride told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. “Part of my message to the British electorate is to really think about what kind of parliament you want.”
Almost all of the Conservatives’ efforts in the final days of the campaign would go into the voting operation aimed at voters who supported the party five years ago, especially in areas of rural areas and southern England, a Sunak aide said. Any voters who hint to Tory candidates that they are considering voting for Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK would receive damaging information about the party’s candidates, such as the one who reportedly called Adolf Hitler “as brilliant as he is utterly evil.” would have mentioned.
If the Tory ground campaign is successful, Sunak could win dozens more seats than currently projected, the aide said. While that would still represent a crushing defeat, it would better preserve the more than 300-year-old party to fight again.
One problem with that is that the man in charge of the Conservatives’ field operation took a leave of absence this week after becoming embroiled in a scandal in which prominent Tories close to Sunak were accused of using inside information to place bets on the election date.
“Gamble-gate is just another factor making it harder to win back undecided,” says Luke Tryl of the think tank More In Common. “The likely outcome is that some voters who had reluctantly voted Tory will now not do so, bringing the catastrophic defeat projections closer to reality.”
The row has sparked widespread anger among Tory members over the quality of their own campaign. There is almost universal disbelief among Conservative ministers that Sunak chose to call an election in the summer, before better economic data filtered through.
Traders expect the Bank of England’s first rate cut to come as early as August, meaning Starmer is likely to be the beneficiary of any feel-good factor. A longer run-up to the election would have given the Tories more time to scrutinize Starmer and his shadow cabinet over their past positions on tax and other issues, a Tory candidate has said.
Ministers have been scathing about Sunak’s own performance, which reached a low point when he was forced to apologize for leaving the D-Day commemorations early. Two senior ministers said they believed the party would achieve a less bad result if the Prime Minister announced this weekend that he understood the public did not want him as their leader and was withdrawing from the campaign to give the Cabinet a chance to argue for a strong government. Tory Opposition.
There is anger not only at the limited tax cuts Sunak included in the Conservative manifesto, but also at the way they have been sold to the public. A Tory candidate said the prime minister had promised five different tax cuts, but his main message in television appearances was to claim Starmer would increase taxes by £2,000 ($2,530), a figure widely criticized as dubious.
Even the Tory campaign on social media, led by Sunak’s closest aide Cass Horowitz, has provoked internal anger. A graphic suggestion that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping welcome Starmer as prime minister is seen by conservative candidates as not only gutter politics but also embarrassing for the party. The worst was yet to come when, as the gambling scandal was unfolding, an image of a roulette wheel was posted on the Tories’ X account. After much ridicule it was removed.
In a fortnight’s time, Sunak may conclude that his gamble on the summer election was the most damaging gamble of all.
–With assistance from Joe Mayes, Ellen Milligan, Ailbhe Rea, James Woolcock and Anna Edwards.
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