If exit polls are to be believed, the UK Conservative Party is on track for the worst general election result in its history, with the prospect of only clinching 131 seats to Labour’s projected 410 — a landslide that outdoes even the stonking majority a Brexit-fueled Boris Johnson pulled off five years ago.
Even without polling consistently indicating a wipeout, anyone with access to new media and a passing interest in UK politics has been left with the same impression: the Tories appeared to be throwing the match.
Crikey looks back over what was, without wishing to exaggerate, the most comically inept campaign in the history of Western democracy.
Clinging (to power) in the rain
The vague sense that Sunak just wanted it all over came at the very start of the campaign, which he announced several months earlier than he had to, while being drenched in a heavy rain outside Downing Street.
He may have hoped pushing through without the aid of an umbrella would give the impression of steely resolve, but it mainly implied that a guy claiming to have a plan for the British economy didn’t even have a plan for the British weather. If that weren’t enough, someone had set up a speaker to drown out the drowning PM’s speech with D:Ream’s 1993 hit “Things Can Only Get Better”, which had been the campaign song for Tony Blair’s colossal 1997 Labour victory over John Major.
It would emerge almost immediately that not only had Sunak unnecessarily announced an election at what appeared to be the worst possible time (the polls at the time looked no better for the Tories than they do now), he hadn’t even consulted with many of his colleagues before doing so, leaving reams of legislation headed for the shredder.
Did you see that ludicrous display?
Starting how he meant to go on, Sunak kicked off by asking a group of voters in Wales if they were looking forward to the upcoming European Championship; seems a no-brainer to engage everyday people on football, the UK’s national religion, ahead of a major tournament. Except, unlike the English and Scottish national teams, Wales hadn’t made it to the tournament, falling painfully and dramatically short at the final qualification hurdle when they lost to Poland on penalties in March.
On day two, he didn’t ask Belfast locals about the footy, but he did visit the Titanic exhibition. Later he went to Birmingham Airport and stood beneath an enormous “Exit” sign.
A few days later, it was revealed that key factional leader Steve Baker, a prime Brexiteer, had ducked off to Greece for a holiday. Then someone at Tory HQ accidentally sent an email criticising various MPs for not campaigning to a bunch of people who weren’t supposed to see it.
Quite a first week! It started the low-level hum of dysfunction that blanketed the whole campaign, and would continue as far as Sunak’s much-mocked quip that as a child he knew what it was to go without because his parents never got Sky TV. But so much worse was to follow.
D-Day
Probably the baffling nadir of Sunak’s campaign came on June 6 this year, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Surely the sanctity of commemorating World War II is just about the last remaining consensus the Anglosphere has left, particularly among conservative voters. So what could Sunak have been thinking when he ducked out early from the ceremony in northern France so he could film a TV interview?
Such a blunder would be fairly calamitous even if it hadn’t happened in the midst of an election campaign, but an extra savoury smack was added by Sunak’s promise to bring back national service. Requiring 18-year-olds to spend a year in the military (or else perform community service on weekends) was something practically no-one wanted — not the military (the defence minister had rejected the policy), and certainly not the teenagers in question.
In one surgically precise move, Sunak had alienated the one cohort who might have liked it, as Guy Rundle put it: the “grumpy oldies who want to see whiny yobbish youth given some discipline, a sense of self and a familiarity with the use of dangerous weapons, apparently”. In one stroke, it summed up the powerful anti-genius of Sunak’s campaign.
But even more was to come.
Betgate
In an era when UK PMs have proven less durable than supermarket produce, there’s something slightly old school about a scandal that recalls the heady 2022 era of Boris Johnson. Betgate — the revelation in late June that the Metropolitan Police was investigating bets placed by senior Conservative politicians and officials on the general election date — was redolent of Bojo.
Like the partygate scandal — the series of illegal gatherings (photographed by attendees, naturally) held by Tories during COVID-19 restrictions that eventually did for Johnson — the betting displayed such entitlement, such blatant disregard for consequences, as to go past stupidity, attaining a pure clean and active contempt for voters.
It was, after 14 years of stagnation punctured by absurdity (perhaps sketched best by William Davies in London Review of Books and Sam Knight in The New Yorker), it was an appropriate scandal with which to end the Tory era.
