General Election 2024

In a somewhat unexpected development my prediction of a summer election has turned out to be spot on. The general consensus among political commentators had been that Rishi Sunak would hold off going to the country until at least November, in the hope that the economy might have picked up enough by then to underwrite some crowd-pleasing tax cuts, but he has opted to gamble on a snap poll in July instead. This rather suggests that he believes that the state of the country in two months will be bad enough to render him even less electable than he is now, if such a thing is possible, which is not a particularly reassuring message.

So we can look forward to six weeks or so of what is likely to be a deeply unpleasant campaign, as the Tories fall back on the blend of xenophobia and culture-war fear-mongering that is their only hope of distracting the electorate from their actual record in government. In theory, all Labour will have to do is stay quiet and look competent, which I’m sure they have the discipline for, so I can’t see the final outcome being anything other than a change of regime, which will be relief after all the nonsense of the last few years.