If there’s just one message to come out of the latest two by-elections in British politics it’s this — Rishi Sunak is drinking in Last Chance Saloon.
The Prime Minister and his party got smashed. The sheer scale of the swings against them in Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire were truly historic.
Matt GoodwinRex
In fact, the 24-point swing against the Tories in Tamworth, which was also a pro-Brexit seat, is the second highest swing at any by-election in the entire postwar era.
Put simply, these are among the worst by-election results for any government in history.
So, what on earth would you tell Mr Sunak if you were advising him?
Well, if I was invited along to the Monday morning meeting in Downing Street here’s what I’d say.
I poll voters every week and sit in focus groups with them all the time. And if there is one word that captures what they want it is this: security.
They want economic security from the most severe cost of living crisis and the sharpest fall in living standards for half a century.
They want physical security from the collapsing National Health Service –which increasingly looks like it belongs to the third world– and also from the proliferation of crimes like shoplifting, for which nobody ever seems to be punished.
They want national security from the spiralling number of small boats and illegal migrants that are entering Britain, from the Islamist terrorist sympathisers who were celebrating the sickening attacks on Israel, and from what still looks and feels to many ordinary Brits like mass, uncontrolled immigration into their country.
And they want cultural security from the creeping spread of radical “woke” ideology in our schools, universities, civil service and other institutions, which has left so many people unable to say what they really think about issues like sex, gender, race, our British identity and history because they are genuinely fearful of what might happen to them if they do.
PAPrime Minister Rishi Sunak[/caption]
My prediction is this — whoever connects most strongly with voters on this theme of security will win the next election –and win it comfortably.
This is what was wrong with Mr Sunak’s recent conference speech, by the way. While voters want to talk about security he talked about banning smoking and changing A-levels. He just looked like he was living in a different world to everybody else.
So, while the odds of Sunak turning the race around and winning the next election are very slim –I recently told one of his cabinet ministers they have no more than a 5% chance– there are several things he could be doing.
First, I’d tell him the only thing he has on his side is time.
He needs to shelve any plans for an early election and push it as far back as possible, to December 2024 or even January 2025.
He needs time so he can hope and pray several key things now go his way.
Next month, he will need the courts to rule in his favour on the stalled ‘Rwanda plan’ –the proposal to send the rapidly rising number of illegal migrants, which are currently costing the British taxpayer £4 billion a year, to the African nation and get them out of Britain.
Immigration is the third top issue for voters and the top priority for Sunaks own Tory voters.
This will allow Sunak to show the British people he is finally getting his arms around the problem and has an active deterrent for the tens of thousands asylum seekers and illegal migrants who are risking their lives, keeping the organised criminal gangs in business, and making a mockery of the claim we’ve “taken back control”.
In turn, if the plan works, the number of small boats that are crossing the Channel and entering Britain illegally should start to fall next year, which will allow Sunak to finally take the fight to Labour, who want to scrap the plan entirely despite having no serious alternative.
I’d also tell Rishi Sunak and his team to roll out a plan for slashing the spiralling level of legal immigration, too, which is simply out of control.
At a dinner recently, one Cabinet Minister told me the British people only care about stopping the boats and don’t care about net migration running at over 600,000.
I told the waiter I’ll have whatever the minister is having because they were clearly away with the fairies.
Rishi Sunak should reaffirm his commitment to slashing legal net migration and bringing it back down to where it is before the Tories took office.
He should also raise the salary thresholds for incoming migrant workers which are currently as low as £23,000 in some sectors, well below the national average wage.
And he should slash the number of dependants entering Britain, often with international students. Both make a mockery of the Tory claim that Britain now has a “high skill” migration policy.
He also needs to use the time to hope and pray that something else starts to fall too –inflation.
If you ask voters to name their top priority they say “cost of living”.
They’re being battered by their mortgages, rents, council tax bills, food prices, and more.
Sunak can’t slash taxes because we don’t have the money for it. We have masses of debt, low growth, and not enough productivity.
But he could start to pave the way for meaningful cuts in the future by hoping inflation continues to fall throughout 2024, by slashing pointless spending on things like “diversity, equality and inclusion” in the public sector, by slashing waste in the NHS and ignoring calls to send more of our money abroad to international aid programmes.
If inflation does continue to fall, and he can show meaningful progress on tackling things like the small boats then he will be able to go into the election with the narrative Labour fear the most: “we’re over the worst, we’ve turned the corner, let’s not go back to economic chaos and mass immigration with a Labour government”.
Whether voters buy it is an open question. Two thirds of them now say they want change at the next election, as the by elections just confirmed.
But as Rishi Sunak the teetotaller sips on his lemonade in the Last Chance Saloon he will know this is his only option.
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