July (un)elected? Why Sunak went early and what happens next

There were some sound reasons for a midsummer election. But Rishi Sunak forgot to check the meteorological or political weather

A soaking wet and drowned out Rishi Sunak appears to have lost the general election the moment that he stepped out of 10 Downing Street this afternoon to call it.

On July 4th 2024 it will have been four years and five months since the last general election in December 2019, but in truth it feels even longer than that. Subsequent events—a chaotic exit from the EU, a deadly pandemic, and myriad global conflicts, all with associated economic catastrophes—have seemed to bend the political time-space continuum. But for everything that has happened since 2019, what also marks out the period is something that hasn’t happened: a nationwide election. The 2010s were a decade of mass balloting, with general elections in 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019 and referenda in 2011, 2014, and 2016. In stark contrast, Brits have had no say about the occupant of 10 Downing Street this decade—even though there have been three of them.

Rishi Sunak appears to have lost the election the moment that he stepped out of 10 Downing Street to call it.

Notable is the quiet but important impact that each of those votes in the past decade have cumulatively had on the present moment. The rejection of the alternative vote system in 2011 ultimately blew apart the cosy Conservative-Lib Dem coalition that even Tories themselves expected the electorate to renew in 2015. That expectation gave David Cameron the confidence, in 2013, to promise a Brexit vote, secure in the assumption that his pro-European coalition partners would veto it. The Scottish National Party may have lost its long dreamed about referendum on independence, but the strength of the “yes” vote ushered in another decade of nationalist rule that is only now creaking. The 2016 Brexit vote brought down the cocksure Cameron, replaced by Theresa May, whose own hubris would in turn cost her a parliamentary majority a year later. May limped on until 2019, when Boris Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done” brought us the present Parliament.

Five years, five chancellors, and three prime ministers later, Rishi Sunak had until just after this Christmas to call a general election, and the working assumption was that he would wait until late enough in the year for the green shoots of an economic recovery to take root. Yet for all his supposed rationalism—in stark contrast to his spontaneously combustible predecessors—Sunak has been a reactive, vibes-based prime minister. While Keir Starmer has doggedly zeroed in on the centre ground, Sunak has been all over the shop: promising continuity then change then continuity; morphing from continuity-green to true blue; a pastiche of his predecessors, a Scrooge-in-reverse taking the wrong lessons from all of them.

Sunak’s final gambit is using his last modicum of unfettered political power—the power to call a general election—at an earlier opportunity than most observers, including in his own party, expected. And in fairness, there were some solid strategic reasons for doing so. For all his attempts to appear the underdog, or the candidate of change (or even to lean into his “tech bro” persona), Sunak is stuck with defending 14 years of Tory rule and a very suboptimal status quo—so anything that makes that status quo seem slightly better is electoral mana. And at the risk of over-simplicity, people are generally happier in the summer, particularly in those rare summers when England are the favourite to win a football tournament. With no immediate prospect of flights to Rwanda leaving the ground, Sunak is free to predict the success of the scheme without being judged by its presumably piddling results. Throw in a return to roughly normal inflation and Sunak has the semblance of the outline of a campaign, and going to the public now means sidestepping future missed migration targets and deepening public service dysfunction expected later in the year.

But to live by the vibes is to die by the vibes. And the vibes were not good at Sunak’s hastily arranged announcement in Downing Street. The prime minister who has hailed the transformative power of AI on trips to Silicon Valley neglected to check the weather forecast before stepping out his front door. Jettisoning the expensive briefing room inside Number 10 meant facing not only the wet weather outside but also the music—the soundtrack, this time, being Things Can Only Get Better. And while Sunak was able to muster more enthusiasm in a later campaign launch in east London, a Sky News reporting team was inexplicably strong-armed out of the venue by overeager security.

With the countdown now started on Britain’s charmingly brief electoral campaign period, we embark on what will either be the most predictable general election since 2005, or the most startling in living memory. I’ll be looking through some of the permutations in the weeks to come, but there are a number of lingering questions that will hopefully be answered in the coming week or so, such as:

• Will there be any televised debates, and if so, when?

• How angry are Tory MPs about the unexpected announcement—and will their anger take the form of defections, retirements, letters of no confidence, or something else?

• Will blasts from the recent political past—like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, or Jeremy Corbyn—emerge to spark trouble for their successors?

• Finally, will anyone pay any attention now to Paula Vennells’ testimony to the Post Office inquiry?

It’ll be a long six weeks, but Labour starts very much as frontrunners, and a large majority for Keir Starmer is not out of the question. Things can only get redder.