Today’s hot topic for the Rishi Sunak-is-terrible-at-politics club is the foolishness of suspending candidates mired in the election betting scandal a full week after Keir Starmer called for that to happen. It certainly makes Sunak look slow and weak and the Labour leader the safer bet, as it were, to be running the affairs of state. But this is just bog-standard tactical incompetence in the face of an unexpected event.
Those of us who have been active in this club for longest know that it is at a strategic level where Sunak’s political cluelessness produces the most dire consequences for his party. Consider the point of attack that Sunak and his lieutenants have been pushing hardest against Labour as we approach the final week of this campaign.
People will think Sunak has got a cheek given his own parlous failure of nerve and practice
At the Sun’s election debate last night, the Prime Minister said Labour would make the UK the ‘soft-touch illegal migration capital of the world’. Michael Tomlinson, the illegal migration minister, has meanwhile been highlighting a report in the Telegraph claiming that some migrants in camps on the coast of France are waiting for a Labour government before attempting to get to Britain. The Home Secretary James Cleverly today claimed Labour would enter into a returns deal with the EU which would mean Britain has to accept 100,000 extra irregular migrants. So Labour’s reputation for being soft on immigration, and illegal immigration in particular, has been identified as a key and potentially vote-shifting weakness by Team Sunak.
And yet Sunak never bothered to establish his own credentials for strength in this area. On the contrary, he is equally as responsible as Boris Johnson for the unprecedented legal immigration boom of the 2019-2024 parliament. And like Johnson before him, he has failed to stop boats crossing the Channel full of illegal migrants. Not only that, but the rate of arrivals has this year hit an all-time record under his premiership, despite his ministers still pathetically seeking credit for a wind-assisted 30 per cent reduction achieved in 2023 as compared to 2022.
Sunak is asking voters to believe that his policy is about to produce magical results that will come on stream next month when flights to Rwanda are due to begin, but only if the Tories are re-elected. He insists there will be ‘a regular rhythm of flights to Rwanda to provide an effective deterrent, starting in July, until the boats are stopped’.
Yet if the Prime Minister was on the verge of a breakthrough on such a key metric, why would he have called an early election before he had the chance to demonstrate that to cynical voters who are not inclined to believe anything he says on this topic?
People who were born before Monday will surely suspect that he cut and run precisely because he not only expected flights to Rwanda to be held up yet again by legal challenges but also anticipated a summer boom in crossings that would leave his approach in tatters. As it happens, that boom is already well under way in full public gaze.
So, when he and his ministers attack Labour for preparing to make things worse there will be three main consequences. First, people will think he has got a cheek given his own parlous failure of nerve and practice. Secondly, some may well think he has a point that Labour won’t run things any better.
But thirdly, this will not lead them back to the Tory fold. Instead, it will cause them to wonder if there is anyone else on offer at this election who might take a more energetic approach to thwarting illegal immigration. And oh yes, there is. Nigel Farage and the Reform party are serving up a red meat diet of quitting the ECHR and escorting the migrant boats back to the coast of France.
Imagine an alternative political world in which Sunak, on becoming prime minister, had declared a migration emergency and immediately put in place measures to bring down legal immigration drastically and also deterred the illegal traffic by setting up an offshore processing camp on Ascension Island so nobody in a dinghy got to set foot on mainland British soil. In those circumstances, public doubts about Labour’s basic soundness on immigration matters would indeed have become a potentially insuperable electoral obstacle for Starmer’s party and created a route to a fifth successive Tory victory.
But Sunak didn’t do that. And so any sceptical noises he makes now go into the great political translation machine of public consciousness and come out the other end as the three-syllable phrase ‘vote Farage’.
Those of you who have been paying attention will know the reason for this: Rishi Sunak is terrible at politics.
Listen to more on the Coffee House Shots podcast:
Comments