BY PAUL T HORGAN
Rishi Sunak. Remember him? It may be the relentless pace of news, replacing the legacy analogue cycle of four discrete opportunities for the average person to catch up on the news, that makes it seem that Mr Sunak was Prime Minister a eon ago. It was only 14 months ago that he lost the General Election. Sunak went into the polls with the Conservatives set to lose, so his only real decision was by how much should the Conservatives lose.
The Conservatives lost by a lot. But then their campaigning seemed rather weak. Labour won a stonking majority, but with the lowest percentage of the vote to have such a majority. It was described at the time as a ‘loveless landslide’. Labour did not win the General Election so much as the Conservatives lost it.
In fairness to Sunak, it would have been impossible for a government to come back from the fiasco of the late Summer/Early Autumn of 2022 which saw Boris Johnson quit after a frontbench revolt, Liz Truss quit after the markets revolted in fear over her radical economic policy, and Rishi Sunak, the instigator of the frontbench revolt, had to pick up the pieces.
But the only question of the General Election of 2024 was really the size of Labour’s majority. Sunak could have run an aggressive campaign that limited this. He did, to a degree, have nothing to lose, as the election was already lost on the day he made his rain-soaked announcement that kept Paula Vennells, whose first day of evidence in the Post Office Inquiry it also was, off the front pages.
So, given that Sunak could have fought a more aggressive and targeted campaign to save Conservative seats, is it possible that Sunak threw the General Election?
I freely admit that I am dwelling in tinfoil-hat territory here, but please hear me out…
If Sunak was acting in the national interest, this dictated that Labour should have a large landslide majority, as I will explain later. But first, consider all the possible outcomes of the 2024 General Election, together with my proprietary national interest rating.
1. Conservative Landslide – No, that is just far too silly to contemplate. If the news media dug up compromising facts or images about Sir Keir and also Nigel Farage, maybe. Although the Lib Dems could also benefit. National interest rating: 10 (out of 10, yes, I am biased)
2. Slim Conservative Majority – Let the bells peal up and down the land, Sunak saved it. Starting with an 80-seat majority, Sunak had wriggle room, and a campaign that limited the damage of Reform UK prevented the Conservative vote from splitting too much. True, his majority is in single figures, and so backbench Conservatives can scupper this in any vote, but he has held on. Except that there is a form of natural wastage of MPs and by-elections can whittle this majority away in short order. So this is not an advertisement for stability. And was also highly unlikely, if not impossible, to happen. Let’s be honest. National interest rating: 8
3. Conservatives the largest party – Our friend from the 2010s, the Hung Parliament returns, except there are no takers for a coalition or confidence and supply agreement this time, or the arithmetic does not work. His Majesty may ask Sir Keir to form a government despite all this. In fact that is exactly what happened in 1924, so history would repeat itself. The difference is that Sir Keir would have to go cap-in-hand to the SNP, the various nationalist parties, the Lib-Dems, the Greens, and, worst of all, Corbyn’s jihadist tendency. They would all demand concessions. Chaos ensues. Things get pretty bad, unless there is a fresh General Election a few months later, Wilson-style, and this would take place in the shadow of the Southport atrocity and consequent disorder. National interest rating: 1
4. Labour largest party – Similar to the above, except Labour get to be in coalition or have a confidence and supply agreement. But with whom? SNP or the Lib-Dems? An agreement with the SNP could only be on the basis of more Scottish independence or a second referendum. Not good for a United Kingdom remaining that much united. National Interest rating: SNP 1, Lib-Dems 5
5. Slim Labour Majority – Sir Keir has won, but his purge of Corbynistas from the Front Bench and Labour manifesto has backfired as there are enough MPs in the Corbynista Socialist Campaign Group to scupper his majority. He is in office but not in power. The tail wags the dog, as the Conservatives threaten to put down a motion of no confidence every time Labour loses a vote. Labour shifts further and further to the left just to keep its majority intact and avoids calling a fresh General Election, which would, on current polling, lead to a Reform majority. National interest rating: 1
6. Strong Labour Majority/Landslide – What we have now. The government is an utter mess, it is not acting strongly in the national interest, and despite a landslide, has lost the initiative to Reform, which has but 4 MPs in the Commons. Labour outnumber Reform by a ratio of 100 to 1, but you wouldn’t think it now. But just imagine what has gone on in the preceding 14 months under any of the above non-Conservative scenarios. Things would have been a lot worse. This is a very small mercy. But it is a mercy nonetheless. National interest rating: 5
Observant readers may notice that the rating for a Labour landslide and Labour/Lib-Dem coalition/confidence-and-supply are the same. That’s because I have no idea what the difference is between Labour and the Lib-Dems at the moment, and neither do you.
The Slim Labour Majority rating is based on Sir Keir not going to the country again in despair at backbench revolts. The Turkeys/Christmas rule applies.
But based on the Horgan System of National Interest Ratings™, it can be seen the non-Conservative national interest was best served by Sir Keir having a stonking majority, which he got, so he did not have to worry about awkward backbenchers extracting ideologically-informed concessions from his government, or doing deals with the SNP and/or Corbyn. But that’s about it. Sunak dealt Sir Keir a superb hand. Sir Keir has played it very badly indeed. The question is did Sunak do it deliberately, and in the national interest?
While the Labour government has been quite awful to the extent of seeing a collapse in the polls even faster than John Major had after Black Wednesday in 1992, it could have been much worse, had Sir Keir not had the insulation of a landslide majority. That would have damaged the country even further than he has done already, despite commanding a superb majority in the Commons. My national interest ratings are based on potential, not outcome. That’s for the voters to decide.
Ridiculous? Well, we do seem to be having an extended Silly Season under Sir Keir’s Labour government. A minister for homelessness quitting when it is revealed she made her tenants homeless so she could jack up the rent. An anti-corruption minister who had to quit after she was indicted for corruption over billions looted in her native country. A housing minister who has been banging on about ‘Tory sleaze’ and a tightening of the MPs’ rules, discovered to be cheating the taxman in a property deal. We are in Yes Minister territory, except it’s not made up, and lasts longer than 30 minutes. And you will have to live with the consequences.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.