UK Budget date kickstarts huge election year

THE week between Christmas and New Year is traditionally a time for UK politics to take a holiday. However, Dec 27 saw UK Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt fire the starting guns on the 2024 general election campaign, announcing a Mar 6 date for his annual budget.

This announcement will fuel speculation that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could call the election in the first half of 2024. However, whenever the timing is, the most likely scenario is a significant change in UK politics which will have key international implications, not only domestic ones.

To be sure, there may be some significant continuity in UK foreign policy to begin with. This includes issues such as strong UK support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

However, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer says that one of his chief priorities, if he becomes prime minister, is “the restoration of the United Kingdom and its reputation on the world stage”. His argument is that many people overseas feel that the nation has “turned (its) back on the world and wherever you go people feel almost the absence of the United Kingdom, once a leading voice, now rarely consulted”.

With longstanding global allies, like the United States, this could see a strong relationship between Starmer and US President Joe Biden in what the Labour leader has called the opportunity for a “progressive moment”. This possibly might even get close to the warmth of relations between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton almost a quarter of a century ago.

Meanwhile, closer to home in Europe, Labour wants a “much better” Brexit deal with the European Union (EU) when the current agreement is next reviewed in 2025. Starmer thinks the current pact is “too thin”, and wants a “closer (UK-EU) trading relationship”.

The prospect of Labour likely winning most seats at the election is shown by recent polls, which still indicate the party could possibly have its biggest electoral success since its landslide wins under Blair in 1997 and Clement Atlee in 1945. Take the example of the Electoral Calculus prediction tool, which currently forecasts Labour winning some 459 seats at the general election, which will give it a huge majority.

That may exaggerate the outcome which would surpass even the 1997 Labour landslide and that of 1945 too. To put the 459 number into historical perspective, in the 21 elections since 1945, the winning party has only twice gained as many as 400 MPs. That was Labour in 1997 and again in 2001 under Blair’s leadership.

It is still plausible that the national polls will tighten in coming months, of course. However, Labour is nonetheless likely to win more seats than the Conservatives, even if the size of victory is by no means assured to be on a historically epic scale such as 1997 and 1945.

Labour’s current big lead reflects not just the success of its leader Starmer in restoring confidence after its huge 2019 election loss. It also highlights Britons’ wide discontent with the Conservatives who have tried and ditched four prime ministers in the past seven years as Brexit, and also the pandemic, caused major convulsions across the country.

Increasingly, it appears as if Sunak’s position is comparable to that of then Conservative prime minister John Major prior to the 1997 election. Around a year and a half before that 1997 election, the Conservative standing in the polls was as low as it is today, notwithstanding the economy being in much better health. By the time the general election came, the Tories had regained modest support, but not nearly enough to keep hold of power, winning only 165 seats – less than half the number it had in the previous parliament from 1992 to 1997. Notably, the current forecast from Electoral Calculus sees the Tories bagging just 120 seats at the next ballot.

To regain any significant political momentum, Sunak needs to get over a wide series of challenges beforehand. More than a year into his term of office, he has had a very difficult time on 10 Downing Street, although he has not (yet) experienced a similar disastrous chain of events that his predecessor Liz Truss did in 2022 which saw her prime ministership implode within 50 days.

However, Truss’ tenure is a very low baseline from which to judge Sunak’s term. In practice, this has had some “ups” but a lot more “downs” such as the significant number of Cabinet resignations for ethics-related reasons.

While it is by no means certain that Labour will win a historically huge majority at the next general election, there is a growing perception that the party will emerge with the largest number of MPs in Westminster. This is encouraging growing numbers of Conservative MPs to announce their retirement from politics – so far some 50 of them have done so, including former Cabinet ministers such as ex-defence secretary Ben Wallace.

However, bad as the mood music is now for Sunak, he may yet escape a leadership challenge in 2024, and is most likely to take the Conservatives into the next election. This is, in part, because of the declining political fortunes of ex-prime minister Boris Johnson, who has now left parliament with a cloud over his head, and whose standing within the party has slipped.

Yet, Sunak still has a massive political hill to climb as he, like other previous prime ministers who take over in the mid-term of a parliament, tries to give himself time to establish his office before going to the polls. It’s a mammoth task for Sunak because no party in modern UK political history has won five elections in a row, and he must try to do this in the context of a divided Conservative caucus of MPs, and also a long period of sluggish economic growth.

Moreover, he must deliver on these huge challenges against a backdrop where Johnson (and indeed the much wider number of ministers leaving office in recent years, including Truss) could become even more significant political thorns in his side. In recent weeks, for instance, Truss has been renewing her push for a radical low-tax agenda, and launched a new Growth Commission which is putting huge political pressure on Sunak.

Taken together, this is why Labour is now likely to win the most seats at the general election, potentially in overwhelming fashion. While Sunak is likely to stay as prime minister until then, the political winds are blowing strongly against the ruling Conservatives winning a fifth straight term of office.

The writer is an associate at LSE Ideas at the London School of Economics