By Jessica Frank-Keyes
Happy new – and election – year.
Usually at the start of a fresh calendar I’m among those terminally date-confused, scribbling corrections in the margins of my notebook for weeks.
But strangely enough, I’ve adjusted to writing 2024 straight away. In this instance the reason is clear.
Here in Westminster, and outside of it, we’ve all been writing, talking and hotly anticipating the 2024 election year for months already.
Both party leaders made the election timing a feature of their first week of the new term. Rishi Sunak insisted his working assumption was that it would take place in the “second half of the year”.
While Keir Starmer insisted he’d been calling for his opponents to get on with it for months now. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for, preparing for, fighting for,” he said, in a New Year’s speech.
Since then, that theme has continued, with former Chancellor and podcaster George Osborne claiming No10 had set a date – November 14 – to go to the country, a date reported two weeks earlier by the Sunday Times.
However, things can change. A significant poll this week – forecasting a 1997-wipeout for the Tories – saw Conservativve election guru Isaac Levido insist to wobbly MPs that he was “fighting to win” and that voters “are looking for reasons to vote for us.”
Polls may be like perfume – “nice to smell, dangerous to swallow” – as Labour’s general secretary put it at the Jewish Labour Movement conference this weekend.
But with opponents scenting victory, it’s hard to see the argument for the Conservatives to go early.
This message seems to have filtered through to the public as well. A very unscientific poll I ran on Twitter (sorry, X) saw almost two thirds of respondents say they thought the election would come in November.
And interestingly the smallest slice was those who identified as being “in politics” who also voted for May: just under 11 per cent, suggesting some consensus.
Bar a fundamental turnaround or national crisis, it’s looking like an autumn on the doorsteps.
What then are the hopes that waiting until November is based on? Perhaps most important for the Prime Minister, who has staked three of his five pledges on the economy, is the nation’s bank balance.
Inflation has been halved, but the Institute for Government (IfG) has warned cutting debt and growing the economy are either in doubt or not fully achieved.
“While debt is forecast to fall from 93.2 per cent in 2027-28 to 92.8 per cent, the following year, this is predicated on unrealistic cuts to public spending,” they said.
The promises were made in early 2024, meaning a full 12 months later, UK plc is still sluggish. Could a March budget, promising further tax cuts, begin to turn things around?
Pollster Luke Tryl, of left-leaning campaign group More in Common, reckons “the Tories desperately need time” and the impact of tax cuts may not bed in before November.
“If they had an ideal, it’d be May 2025… November is probably the best of a bad hand.”
It’s not just the economy, though.
Get through this week’s renewed scrap over the Rwanda Bill, and months of gentler weather could prompt another uptick in boats and yet more vitriolic debate – whether or not flights get off the ground.
But whether the pledges are achieved or not, timing-wise there are other considerations.
Some suggest ‘corporate Ken’ Sunak is hoping to last a full two years in the job, in the hopes of boosting his CV for the post-politics world. In a mirror image, Labour are currently tiptoeing across 2024’s polished floor with that ‘Ming vase’ of a poll lead clutched in tremulous arms.
Shadow ministers – reportedly told to prepare policies for the manifesto by the end of Feb – are itching to fire the starting gun on the campaign.
While Sunak is keen to run down the clock, Labour are eager to seize what they see as their moment and will continue to put pressure on the Prime Minister to pull the trigger.
It’s already feeling like a long year in politics.
