When Rishi Sunak announced a July election during a torrential downpour, one leftist wag played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ at high volume in adjacent Whitehall.
The audible strains of the D-Ream hit – which served as Tony Blair’s election anthem – added to the impression of a drowning PM and conveyed the notion that a heavy Tory defeat was inevitable. And so it proved.
Yet the parallels with 1997 are already done and dusted. Because while Blair had a political honeymoon which lasted all the way to the subsequent election, Keir Starmer’s ended almost as soon as it began. It is today reported that Starmer will acknowledge this in a speech on Tuesday in which he will explicitly declare: ‘Frankly, things will get worse before we get better.’
Given that the Government has already alienated big voter tribes such as pensioners and a fast-emerging working class white identity group set to cause it all kinds of new problems, this is sensible expectations management.
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