Spring is here, and with it some green shoots for beleaguered Conservatives. Rishi Sunak has emerged, like Daniel, miraculously unscathed from the lion’s den of Brexit. His “Windsor framework” reforms to the Northern Ireland protocol have been widely praised, with even hardline Brexiters becalmed, if not fully satisfied.
More good news may soon follow – buoyant revenues may enable a crowd-pleasing budget from Jeremy Hunt later this month, while sharply falling gas prices should bring down energy bills and inflation as the year wears on. Optimism is also growing that some of the recent strikes may soon be resolved.
While such victories strengthen Sunak’s hand internally, the real test is whether they can deliver a change in Tory electoral fortunes. Early polling suggests the jury is still out on the Windsor deal, with more than 60% of voters in today’s Opinium poll saying they did not rate it good or bad, or had not heard enough to form a view. Yet while most voters will hear little, and care less, about the specifics of the new trade rules, success still has broader impacts – Sunak’s net approval rating is up seven points, and the share of voters rating the Conservatives as united is up eight points.
The prime minister has a chance to build on these early gains if he can convince voters resigned to the chaotic mismanagement of his predecessors that he is delivering on their priorities. While each success does little in isolation, better news on a broad front can produce a cumulative shift in mood. Such, anyway, is the hope.
Sunak needs a sea change if he is to win a Westminster mandate of his own. He faces a polling deficit that has remained above 20 points ever since Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous “mini-budget”. Recovering from such a low ebb is a daunting task but not, polling history suggests, impossible. Most governments have midterm blues, and nearly all recover as elections approach. Conservative incumbents have historically proven more resilient: after hitting rock bottom,
Tory incumbents since 1945 have regained an average of 10 points on election day, twice the typical Labour rebound. Three Conservative governments since 1945 have faced poll deficits of more than 20 points and yet gone on to win – Sunak will hope to add his name to those of Harold Macmillan (1959), Margaret Thatcher (1983) and John Major (1992) on the great comebacks honours board.
While the game is not up yet, Sunak has a tough task ahead. Conservatives cannot hope for the economic sunshine of 1959, or the divided and divisive opposition of 1983, while Sunak has not been able to match in his early months the big honeymoon bounce Major achieved in 1991. The PM is also weighed down by a party voters now hold in contempt. The public no longer trust the Tories to manage the economy, the NHS or anything else. One recent poll had them trailing Labour on every single issue, from healthcare and schools to immigration and the war in Ukraine. Brexit breakthroughs and budget handouts may provide Sunak with useful fragments to shore up his ruined party, but undoing the damage done in the time remaining is a massive challenge.
Continued public ambivalence about Labour gives some firmer grounds for hope – ratings for Keir Starmer and his party remain mediocre. It is easy for oppositions to feast on government misfortunes at midterm, when polls are a judgment on ministers’ performance. As election day approaches, criticism gives way to choice. Doubts about an untested opponent will become more salient and evidence of competence and delivery will count for more. If Sunak can build on last week’s gains, and economic winds blow fairer, he may go into the campaign able to put a credible case for continuity, while stressing the risks of change.
The biggest challenges he may face in framing such a choice may come from his own party. Sunak needs to keep the focus on fresh successes, yet his predecessors remain eager to revisit past disasters. Liz Truss has tried to reframe the chaos of her brief premiership as good ideas badly executed, while Boris Johnson sees Labour’s appointment of Sue Gray, the civil servant charged with investigating Downing Street lockdown antics, as a chance to dismiss the Partygate scandals as politically motivated. Every day spent discussing interest rate rises and lockdown parties is a happy day for Labour campaigners, yet closing these stories down would require Johnson and Truss to take responsibility for past errors and put the interests of their party first. Neither impulse has been much in evidence to date.
Sunak can still set the stage for a great final act comeback, but only if he can stop the noises off from distracting his audience.
Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019
