Rishi Sunak is planning a general election on 14 November, according to the former chancellor George Osborne, as the prime minister looks to maximise the amount of time he has to recover the Conservatives’ poll deficit before polling day.
Speaking on Political Currency, the podcast he hosts with the former Labour cabinet minister Ed Balls, Osborne said he had been told Sunak’s team were working towards the date in mid-November as the target for an election.
Sunak has said his “working assumption” is that he will hold the vote in the second half of the year, while Conservative sources say a final decision has not yet been taken over a date.
Osborne, who is close to many of those around Sunak, told the podcast: “A little birdie has told me that the various work programmes required to get ready for a general election have that date singled out – 14 November.
“By the way, logic leads you there because you’re not going to have it in the first half of the year. I mean, this pretence that Rishi Sunak could have a May election was something we discussed last year. It’s a non-starter. He’s more than 20 points behind in the opinion polls. He’s not going to have a spring election.
He added: “So then you’re left with the autumn. And you’re probably thinking: ‘I know, we’ll have the party conference as a kind of launch pad. We’ll fit in an autumn statement, like a mini-budget, either before that or immediately after it.’ And that kind of leads you into mid-November. So 14 November kind of writes itself.”
Sunak has until January 2025 to hold an election, and Labour politicians had speculated that he would do so in May this year. Earlier this month however the prime minister clarified that he was thinking of a date in the second half of the year.
He told broadcasters during a visit to Nottingham: “My working assumption is we’ll have a general election in the second half of this year and in the meantime I’ve got lots that I want to get on with.”
Tory sources do not deny they have an election date in mind, but say they are retaining the flexibility to move it if needed.
An election on 14 November would mean Sunak announcing it at or around the Conservative party conference in early October. It would also mean the second general election in a row which has been fought in the colder months.
With the Conservatives 18 points behind in the polls, many of their strategists believe they should leave it as late as possible to call an election to give the economy and public services time to recover. The Bank of England now forecasts inflation to fall to 2% by April, while Sunak says he thinks NHS waiting lists will begin falling in a sustained way this spring.
Osborne said Sunak had made a mistake in the first few weeks of the year, however, by focusing on immigration rather than the economy. “I was listening at home, I was thinking: why are you going on about immigration and asylum seekers and Rwanda again? That’s how we ended last year, and it’s a mess.
“I’m not saying immigration’s not a very important issue, but let’s be honest, it’s not like the public think that the Conservatives have got a grip on it at the moment. You should be talking about the economy.”
