Was this the week the wheels came off for Rishi Sunak? After two weeks of campaigning on a “clear plan for bold action for a secure future,” the verdict in the polls is clear: voters don’t like his clear plan, don’t want his bold action, and believe their future will be safer without him. All of this was true even before the Prime Minister’s disastrous Thursday afternoon decision to leave the D-Day celebration early for a pre-recorded media interview.
Make no mistake: Conservatives now they are looking down the barrel. Their campaign is failing on all fronts with very little time left. Voters decide, and what the Prime Minister is proposing is not what they want.
A key theme of every recent Conservative campaign has been building up the leader and sowing doubt about their opponent. But a leader-focused approach only makes sense if voters like your leader, or at least prefer him to the alternative. Prime Minister Tory’s three predecessors started their campaigns in advance, giving them an advantage to try to push.
Sunak has no such advantage. His leadership approvals at the start of the campaign are among the worst ever recorded – as bad as Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 or Gordon Brown at the height of the financial crisis. His choice of campaign has not improved matters. Keir Starmer may not get hearts racing, but he doesn’t need to run against such an opponent. Starmer began this campaign with the same lead in the ratings that Tony Blair had over John Major in 1997.
The campaign so far has not changed that picture, as Opinium’s regular questions about leadership qualities confirm. Keir Starmer doesn’t get stellar ratings, but he still eclipses Rishi Sunak’s awful ratings on every quality from contact to likability and competence.
Governments can also work on their records. We see this in the Conservatives’ promotion of their “bold action” on the Covid holiday, energy prices, pensions and taxes on the campaign trail and in debates. Building a campaign around past successes can be a smart strategy when voters recognize your good performance. The problem for Sunak is that his party’s reputation has now taken a hit and voters are giving his government poor marks across the board.
The verdict of public opinion on the outgoing government is damning. More than six in 10 voters think the government has performed poorly on every single issue except defense and security – and Sunak’s gaffes last week are likely to cloud that remaining bright spot. Voters give the government even worse marks on the issues they care most about, with 80 or 90% giving it a failing grade on the issues that matter most to them.
Other polls paint a similar picture – more than four-fifths of voters polled by Ipsos last week are dissatisfied with the way the government is running the country (83%) and two-thirds do not think the Conservatives deserve re-election (67%). Both figures are the highest recorded since Sunak took over.
The bad news doesn’t stop there. In campaigns, incumbent parties can usually rely on brand advantages, drawing on long-established strengths. Not this time. Sunak’s Tories now trail Labor on every single issue in the the latest YouGov survey. The Tories’ long-standing advantages in areas such as immigration, crime and defense have disappeared, while Labor has opened up a huge lead in traditional areas of strength such as health, education and housing. Most importantly, Labor secured a lead on the economy, overturning the advantage the Conservatives held even in their crushing defeat in 1997. Liz Truss’s legacy runs deep.
If voters don’t like the past, make them look to the future. Little wonder, then, that the Tory campaign showered us with eye-catching new promises and policies. Although the new policies polled well in isolation, they did not change election timing. The problem again is reputation. Voters who believe the government has failed in everything do not trust Sunak or his party to offer anything new. A new restaurant can create an eye-catching menu, but it will fail if the chef has health and safety breaches and there is a fire in the kitchen.
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The barrage of Tory policy was probably not expected to overturn fortunes everywhere. The aim was narrower: to win back the disgruntled Brexiteers tempted by Reform UK. Messages such as national service and triple lock plus pensions were meant to secure the right wing, even at the risk of further alienating moderate voters. Nigel Farage sent that strategy to the bottom of the sea on Monday when he returned as UK reform leader.
The Tories can’t hope to outdo Farage Farage – the curious reformer who distrusts Rishi adores Nigel, who can trump any red meat offered by the Tory campaign with a bigger and juicier steak of his own. The Tories have wasted two precious weeks trying to prevent a right-wing revolt that is now almost guaranteed to hit them hard. Farage will certainly hurt the Conservatives. The only question is how bad.
Many of these flaws have been baked in for a long time. It was always going to be a campaign against the odds. Yet Sunak seems determined to make matters worse with a campaign full of dubious claims and political blunders. This week’s Opinium poll on Observer it only adds to the bad news, with Labor’s lead growing on the biggest issues and more than half of voters saying the Tories have had a bad week. Four in 10 of those polled said they thought it would be fine if the upcoming election completely wiped out the Conservatives, as happened with their Canadian cousins in 1993, going from a majority to just two seats.
Such voters may yet get their wish. Two weeks later, the dial shifted from likely defeat to impending disaster. An elective asteroid passes through the British atmosphere. The impact in the heart of the Tories is just weeks away. Clamp, clamp.
Robert Ford is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester and co-author of The British General Election of 2019
