Politics

May election? Don’t believe the hype

The Labour Party spin machine has been working at full tilt to convince voters that Rishi Sunak is gearing up for a general election in May.

Dispatches sent to supporter inboxes this week give the impression that a May 2nd date is all but set in stone, pointing to a Mirror article which suggests the PM fuelled hype around a spring date during a radio interview, which is a bit of a stretch.

But that hasn’t stopped hype within the Labour Party from hitting fever pitch.

According to HuffPo reports, a popular GIF currently doing the rounds in Labour WhatsApp groups is one of Justin Timberlake miming for the camera in the video for the NSYNC song It’s Gonna Be Me.

The commonly misheard lyric, however, has been changed to ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ to indicate when they think the general election will be.

Hilarious, I know.

But, as George Osborne points out here, the Tories would be ‘absolutely nuts’ to trigger a May election, with the party still floundering in the polls and the prime minister’s five pledges falling by the wayside.

What’s more likely to be the case is that Labour has engaged in a clever piece of electioneering, framing a May election as a sure thing so that they can say Rishi has “bottled it” when he inevitably doesn’t call one.

It also reinforces – and for good reason – the fact that the country is being held to ransom by a man who couldn’t even win the popular vote among Tory members.

It’s all painfully transparent from Labour, but you can’t fault them for it.

Related: Boris Johnson flies to Venezuela, tells regime to ’embrace democracy’

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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Tags: Rishi Sunak