The argument of fear of the opponent is the most obvious sign that a candidate considers himself defeated. It is paradoxical that this Monday, when we celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of David Cameron’s narrow electoral victory, which forced the Conservatives to forge a government coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the only idea that occurs to Rishi Sunak to stimulate their voters is the warning that, if Labor wins, they will have to rely on other parties to take power. The prime minister rules out an early election, despite the disastrous result of the municipal elections held in England and Wales last week, and hopes to overcome the situation with his policy of deportations to Rwanda and with the economic improvement that a foreseeable drop in taxes would bring. interest rates.
Sunak has clung to a dubious extrapolation of the results of local elections to future general elections, carried out by sociologist Michael Thrasher, according to which Labor would not have a sufficient majority to govern alone. They would need, he has warned, up to 32 extra votes from other parties.
“Keir Starmer, pushed to Downing Street by the Scottish nationalists of the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for the United Kingdom,” Sunak warned in the newspaper The Times. “The country does not need this type of political marketing but rather concrete measures.”
By playing with the threat of that hypothesis, Sunak implicitly admitted that his party is heading towards almost certain defeat, a rather discouraging message from the mouth of someone who intends to be a candidate.
Resignation among conservatives
The prime minister’s words are a sad consolation for a party in low hours and worn out in spirit and ideas. The threat of Reform UK,The populist, far-right and anti-European party that Nigel Farage founded in 2018 – and which he later abandoned, although his shadow and influence remain – overexcites the hard wing of the conservatives. Although he has barely achieved a councilor in the municipal elections, the truth is that he barely presented candidates. And in the Blackpool South by-election (by-election, in British slang), which was also held on Thursday, obtained 17% of support and was 150 votes away from taking second place from the conservatives. A by-electionIt is always a small rehearsal of general ones, because it involves electing a new deputy for the House of Commons in a specific constituency, after the death, illness, expulsion or resignation of the deputy who held the position.
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The solution to avoid the debacle, according to the tories more extremists, involves overflowing on the right to Reform UKwith measures against immigration even more draconian than those already approved, and with the definitive break with international legality and the resolutions of the European Court of Human Rights.
“I love my country and I care about my party. I want us to win, and that is why I urge the prime minister to change his policy and reflect with humility regarding what the voters demand of us,” former Home Affairs Minister Suella Braverman, one of the most radical voices, demanded of Sunak on the BBC. and criticism from the conservatives, who does not hide his ambition to fight for the leadership of the party in the future. However, not even Braverman has the desire to launch a new internal revolt to overthrow Sunak and put in his place a candidate who will fight to overcome the situation in the months remaining until the general elections, scheduled for autumn. . “I don’t think that’s viable anymore. There is no time, it is impossible for someone to change our destiny now. There is no superwoman or superman capable of that,” admitted the former minister, who thus exclusively placed the foreseeable defeat on Sunak’s shoulders.
Faced with the shift demanded by the party’s hardline, however, the message most applauded by many conservative deputies was that of Andy Street. The until now mayor of the West Midlands region (West Midlands, with a very Labor tradition) fought until the last minute to renew his mandate, and ended up losing by just 1,500 votes against Labor’s Richard Parker. Popular with voters and effective in his policies, Sunak had hoped to capitalize on a Street victory that in the end was not to be. “The most obvious conclusion that we all drew tonight,” said the defeated candidate toryWhen the results were known on Saturday night, “it is that the type of moderate, inclusive and tolerant conservatism, capable of delivering what it promises, has been a few millimeters away from defeating the Labor Party in a territory that they have always considered theirs.” .
Sunak, however, is determined to please everyone and may end up pleasing no one. Pending the Bank of England’s decision next Thursday – the conservatives hope at least for a cut in interest rates before the autumn elections – the prime minister is confident that the economy will pick up, and its recent drop in taxes begin to bear fruit. But this apparently liberal and moderate policy will be accompanied by the effort to begin deporting irregular immigrants to Rwanda starting in July. The images of people dragged to that fate, the expected flood of appeals before the courts and the more than certain confrontation between the British Government and the European Court of Human Rights could make Sunak’s end one of the most turbulent in recent history. from United Kingdom.
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