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It seems Rishi Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues are starting down the barrel ahead of the UK’s impending General Election. Within the next year or so, Brits will head to the polls to vote for their next government – and it’s not looking good for the Tories.
At this point, the tide of public opinion has firmly turned against the governing party. They trail Labour by roughly 20 points in most opinion polls, and recent policy failures – such as Rwanda and HS2 – have fractured the trust of the electorate.
Keir Starmer is now the favourite to be Prime Minister by the start of 2025, with the Tories facing a bitter end to their near 14-year reign in power. Unfortunately for them, even the senior election experts aren’t giving them much of a sniff.
Ben Page is the Global Chief Executive Officer for IPSOS. The research group is renowned for its polling data, which is used as a key indicator for public sentiment during election cycles. He now believes the Tories have reached a pint where ‘they can no longer make a difference’.
Although Page notes that any final result at a General Election is likely to be tighter than current polls suggest, he also states that the Conservatives won’t be able to harness the ‘Brexit’ vote as they have in previous elections – meaning that ‘their time is up’.
“They are now working with a budget for which the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says it’ll be difficult to pull tax cuts out of the hat. There comes a time when whatever you say and whatever you do makes no difference.”
“I think for Rishi Sunak, that’s where the Conservative Party is now. They could perhaps hang on to January 2025, the last legal time before having to hold an election, and hope for an economic recovery and a Labour stumble. But, frankly, I think their time is up.” | Ben Page
