The news that Jeremy Hunt will deliver next year’s budget on 6 March sparked a fresh round of speculation that Rishi Sunak may be intending a spring election. But it nonetheless seems extraordinarily unlikely.
Look to history. Historically, the fifth year of a parliament tends to be used only by governments that know they’re on the way out – Gordon Brown held out until 2010, John Major until 1997. There is always the hope that something will turn up, and an understandable reluctance on the part of politicians, too, to give up a year in office.
On top of that, Sunak has been in No 10 for just a year and a bit. The government may seem to everyone else to already be in extra time, but it won’t feel that way in Downing Street. An autumn election would give him two years on the job, the first of which (one might argue) was spent steadying the ship after Liz Truss.
Thus, an October or November election remains the most reasonable baseline scenario: late enough to make use of the time remaining in this parliament, but not so late as to ruin Christmas and drag voters to the polls in January.
Despite that, however, we keep getting straws in the wind suggesting that the prime minister is at least leaving open the possibility of going earlier – and not just a budget date that allows plenty of time for an election in May. Currently the opposition is talking up a May election date as being “the worst kept secret in Westminster”.
Sunak himself has only gone as far as saying the election will be next year. Isaac Levido, the party’s campaign director, is moving from Downing Street to Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ) on 1 January, and the party has been warned to be ready for an election from that date.
CCHQ also recently tried and failed to impose byelection rules on candidate selections, a power grab normally justified by the need to get people in place quickly. If the prime minister has settled on an autumn election, this is very strange behaviour.
Previous prime ministers have sometimes encouraged speculation in order to justify going to the country at an advantageous moment. But as Brown found in 2007, it can be a double-edged sword if you change your mind – or never intended to go in the first place. We might find ourselves in May saying that Sunak “bottled it”. So why take the risk? Because an election in May would suit the Conservatives. The case might not be enough to make Sunak go when the polls suggest a historic defeat – but it may induce him to leave the option open, for now.
Most obviously, next year’s local elections will be held on 2 May, and having the general election coincide with that would help the Tories in two ways. First, it would encourage Conservative voters to the polls and help avoid, or at least ameliorate, the devastating loss of councillors that otherwise might result. Second, in large parts of the country, the party will be out in force, fighting for its town hall position, and that will bolster the general election effort, too.
Wait until after May, and CCHQ will have lost hundreds of its most dedicated foot soldiers: its Tory councillors. Without local polls to fight, there will also be less incentive for any activists disenchanted with the leadership (committed Boris Johnson supporters, for example) to go out and pound the pavements for Sunak.
A spring election would also be held at a time when energy bills will be biting less, and would avoid the annual winter crisis in the NHS. Relative to October, it would also mean hundreds of thousands fewer households will have come off their fixed-rate mortgages and been locked into a higher cost of living due to interest rates.
Finally, if the government somehow manages to pass the safety of Rwanda bill intact, May would be the time to go: soon enough to campaign on the achievement, while giving voters little time to realise the very limited impact even a fully operational Rwanda scheme is likely to have on Channel crossings.
And going long has lots of downsides: attritional wear on the Conservative campaign machine, more time for the cost of living to bite, the challenge of getting under-motivated supporters to the polls when it’s cold and dark in the evening.
Nor is there any guarantee that an extra six months won’t end up making things worse: given the current situation in Ukraine and the Middle East, for example, further shocks to food or energy prices can’t be ruled out.
For all those reasons, it would almost certainly suit the Conservative party to fight an election in May, gamble though it may be. But the decision is not the party’s to make: it’s Sunak’s – and he is nobody’s idea of a gambler.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
