Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is due to launch Britain’s next general election campaign on Wednesday, with a much-anticipated keynote address closing his ruling Conservatives’ annual conference.
After several years of devastating scandals and profound economic troubles, the UK leader confronts a daunting task in rallying his ailing Tories to win the election, which is scheduled for 2024.
Sunak’s party, which has been in power since 2010, has consistently behind the main Labour opposition in polls.
However, suggestions that the margin may be closing have brought a ray of hope as the grassroots have assembled in Manchester, northwest England, since Sunday.
Sunak, 43, is scheduled to talk at 11:45 a.m. (1045 GMT) and is anticipated to continue the party’s recent shift into campaign gear, following a flurry of more populist policy announcements and pivots aimed at drawing lines with Labour.
Defence Minister Grant Shapps all but announced ahead of the address that the prime minister will announce the cancellation of the northern leg of the HS2 train line, a highly contentious move that has overshadowed the four-day annual event.
“We have to wait for his actual speech to hear exact confirmation,” Shapps, a former transport minister, told BBC television.
“The balance that has to be made… is whether it makes sense to carry on building that given that the world has changed,” he added.
Sunak, who has been prime minister for over a year, would almost certainly characterize the move as fiscally sensible due to spiraling costs, as he attempts to present himself as a leader willing to make difficult and often unpleasant decisions.
“I do things properly and carefully, responsibly and sensibly… but I’m also willing to do things that are bold, that are different,” Sunak told ITV News on Tuesday.
The UK leader cited his recent softening of the pace of Britain’s net-zero agenda and his plans for new “pro-motorist” policies as examples.
“I have a different approach to politics. I think people have tired of politicians who are… focused on the easy way out, short-term decisions,” he told Sky News in another pre-speech interview.
‘Barely coherent’
Sunak faces a difficult task in persuading voters to stay with the Conservatives following 13 years of instability under his immediate predecessors, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.
The worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, fueled by decades of high inflation and no economic development, as well as extensive strike action, adds to the enormous difficulty.
Three upcoming by-elections, the first of which is on Thursday in a Scottish district, might highlight the magnitude of the challenge ahead, with the Conservatives facing defeat in all three despite winning two of them in 2019.
Labour, whose annual conference begins this weekend in Liverpool, has had poll leads of more than 20 points this year.
Although some recent polls show the deficit closing, the party feels optimistic of resuming administration for the first time since Gordon Brown was prime minister in 2010.
According to a new Savanta poll released on Wednesday, about one-third of 2019 Conservative voters rated Rishi Sunak as “incompetent,” rising to nearly six in ten when all respondents were counted.
“Although the general rule of British general elections is ‘always bet on the Conservatives’, the reality is that they’ve run out of room,” Richard Carr, an associate professor in public policy and strategy at Anglia Ruskin University, told AFP.
“Their agenda of talking about long-term decisions whilst engaging in easy choices that seem purely designed to appease the party base is barely coherent,” added Carr, who edited a volume on the modern Conservative party.
“Faced by a Labour opposition which has got its act together, the most likely outcome is a significant election defeat.”
However, some party members in Manchester seemed more upbeat.
“I trust Rishi — he’s in at a difficult time,” said lifelong Conservative Yvonne Peacock, 71, branding him details-oriented and “not a soundbite person”.
Ian Proud, a retired former Tory councillor in London, predicted “there’s at least 12 months until the next election”.
“A lot can happen,” he cautioned.