When will the UK general election be this year? Mark your diaries, bet you can’t wait. Barring an accident, or a sudden, dramatic, unlikely improvement in Conservative fortunes, it will be on Thursday 14 November. At the start of the year the Prime Minister all but ruled out calling an election this May or June. There have been Tories urging him to go then, to go early, but it always struck me as highly unlikely. British Prime Ministers who are well behind usually hold on and delay and delay in the desperate hope something better will show up, in the form of an economic improvement or a disaster undermining an opponent.
The Bernard Donoughue explanation, which long-term subscribers may be bored of me citing although it is so good it merits repeating, is that PMs are always preoccupied with legacy and length of tenure.
Why did Bernard’s then boss Jim Callaghan not go for an election in the autumn of 1978 when he might have won rather than waiting until the following year? The answer, recounted in the Donoughue Downing Street Diaries, is that nine was a better number than eight, from Callaghan’s perspective. To be Prime Minister from 1976 until 1978, if he lost, would have felt insubstantial, like a stop-gap premiership. Being in office, as Callaghan was, from 1976 until 1979 was just better from the perspective of history.
And so it is with Rishi Sunak. If he called an election for May and lost he would be the 18 month PM. Go in the late autumn and he has been in office for two years. It’s always there on the CV and in the historical record and it cannot be taken away.
They all go up and down that staircase in Number 10, the walls lined with portraits of their predecessors, being reminded of who endured.
George Osborne was quoted this week as saying it will be 14 November. That’s hardly an exclusive insight. In Westminster, 14 November has been regarded as the obvious date since Sunak effectively at the start of the year ruled out an early election.
Everything now points to mid-November. The party conferences are being held slightly earlier this year. Remember it is vital for the parties that they happen, and are not cancelled, not for our entertainment or enlightenment but because they make the parties so much money in sponsorship and fees. They need the money.
That means Sunak can close Tory conference with his leader’s speech on Wednesday 2 October (my birthday, incidentally) and the following day go to the Palace to see the monarch and ask for a dissolution of Parliament. The campaign will then run for six weeks
So, 14 November it is. Probably.
This is an extract from Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter for Reaction Subscribers
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life
