I don’t buy it. They know they will lose the next election, the only question is how much damage they can do before they’re kicked out. He just wants to introduce his upper middle-class tax cuts/subsidies as soon as possible so that they can steal as much as possible from the rest of us.
They’ll hang on for another ~year yet, sad to say.
The tory Party isn’t the pm, it’s likely what they want - which is useful power - doesn’t fit into this thinking.
What’s better, an extra few months of nothing particularly useful that can be reversed as soon as they lose government or focusing on GE 2029.
The fact is that the next few years in Britain is going to be absolutely dire, and being able to point at Labour through that is probably the next messaging. The sooner they can get Labour to try (and likely fail) to deal with the mess they created, the better their GE 2029 prospects are
They also likely want to retain as many seats as they have now, they aren’t going to retain more by waiting.
Labour won’t reverse any of the damage they can do now, so they’ll do as much as they possibly can. They’re in it for the power, and the wealth they can extract. The Tory MO, of course, but especially this generation of Tories. They have no politics bar the advancement of themselves and the people who will end up giving them overpaid jobs. Sunak doesn’t need to work for a living but the pay off for him and his ilk is orders of magnitude greater than what we pay him to do the job.
His ilk, want jobs in five years, they want the power in five years. They want to ensure that more than they want six months more power this year.
Yeah, and also Labour lose nothing from saying it will be in May because it builds expectations and the Tories are the ones who have to explain why they don’t want an election yet…
Exactly this. They’re trying to engineer a 2007-style ‘election that never was’ to make Sunak look weak. And he is weak, so good luck to them!
It depends on whether they think they can _somehow_squeak a win, and when that might be.
If their number crunchers have said their best chance is in May, and that with the right tailwind they might be able to form a coalition government, then we can expect them to go full “sweets for everyone”, and offer every incentive in the box.
The other side of this, is that they need Brexit Party (sorry, Reform UK) either out of the way, or need enough policies that will appease those voters. So I’m expecting some lunacy on the level of “stop the boats”. Or maybe they’ll just invade France.
Sunak got his and his job sucks. Losing an election sounds like an easy way out for his cabinet.
This prediction market has May at 50%, and that’s mainly because I keep buying it off he back of news like this. Seems like a lot of people are May doubters.
Reasons I think May is the most likely candidate are:
- expected polling bounce off a giveaway budget in March
- small boat numbers are at their natural minimum and only rise as Summer begin
- later in the year you start running into things like party conference, which you don’t want to miss, and fuel bills, which are going to be a bad news story again. Even if you rank “holding on to power above all else” as the most important thing, a late Q4 election looks a terrible mistake.
Is it me or does she look like the Slitheen lady from Doctor who?
