I think it was Napoleon who said he preferred generals who are lucky rather than good. It's clear that in Rishi Sunak the Tory party has a leader who is neither. He isn’t very good and he certainly isn’t lucky. Labour won both by-elections yesterday. The swing in Peter Bone's old seat of Wellingborough is said to be the second biggest (29%) in any post-war election. It couldn't have helped that the ONS released figures just as voters trooped to the polls showing the UK had officially slipped into recession. When things aren't going for you that's what happens, isn't it?
The Tories lost an 18,000 majority in Wellingborough and Labour won by 6,500, with nearly 46% of the vote compared to less than 25% for Sunak's chosen candidate, Bone's partner, Helen Harrison. It wasn't even close. Kingswood in Bristol also fell to Labour with a smaller but still decent majority.
It was a spectacular night for Kier Starmer but is only a dress rehearsal for the main event later this year. Rishi Sunak is staring down the barrel. Order popcorn and Prosecco in quantities now.
It all points to a crushing defeat for the prime minister and his sorry excuse for a party whenever the next election comes. The latest mega-poll of 18,000 people forecasts the unprecedented loss of 285 out of 365 seats, leaving the Tories with just 80 MPs, and going by last night's results even this may be an overestimate. Let us pray that it is.
Many cabinet ministers could be among those who will be shoved aside by the voters. Sunak is probably safe from that but not from the wrath of the Tory party. They are ruthless with leaders who don’t bring victory. He must know his time is coming.
The figures published yesterday by the ONS gave a snapshot of the British economy. In the last quarter of 2023, it shrank by 0.3%, following a 0.1% fall in Q2, meaning we are officially in recession. This wouldn’t be a good launching platform for fighting a general election if the prime minister and party were popular, which they patently are not. But mired in sleaze, corruption, and ineptitude, with the longest decline in living standards for decades, it is disastrous. The party’s dismal record over the last fourteen years is going to rightly condemn them to opposition for years.
Even more than the headline figure, the ONS statistics show GDP per capita falling by an even bigger 0.7%. It means the population has grown but perversely output hasn’t and on average we are all that much poorer. Joel Hills, ITV's business and economics editor tweeted:
GDP per Head in the UK (the growth of the economy, divided by all of the people in it + adjusted for inflation) is a better measure of living standards than GDP.The @ONS tables show that GDP per Head in the UK is lower today (£8250) than it was at the end of 2017 (£8264). pic.twitter.com/zCRk6dBHtH— Joel Hills (@ITVJoel) February 15, 2024
People are no better off now on average than they were in 2017! And since we know many CEOs and wealthy investors have done alright and even grown wealthier, it follows that the poorer quartile will have been the most adversely affected. This is the Brexit backlash writ large.
It follows the Goldman Sachs report that I posted about on Wednesday, carrying the clear and unequivocal message that Brexit has contributed significantly to our economic woes. The Tories may have inherited a difficult situation in 2010 but there is no doubt that austerity and Brexit, the two medicines they prescribed and administered were quack remedies and they are about to be punished for it. Brexit was supposed to be a quick fix to our problems but the cure is turning out to be far worse than the disease.
It’s difficult to see things getting much better in the short term.
The other big, if largely unreported news yesterday was that Germany overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy. This may not have been important in normal times but Brexit as in so many other things has made it significant.
The switch may have been due to Japan itself slipping into recession but the irony is that the UK government has repeatedly boasted about joining the ‘fast-growing’ trade bloc known as the CPTPP of which Japan is by far the largest member. We have just left one bloc, which contains the world's 3rd biggest economy while joining another 12,000 miles away which contains the 4th. We are going backwards.
One by one the insane, contradictory, and unachievable claims made for Brexit are being dismantled. It’s no surprise that the UK’s trade with the EU as a percentage of the total is actually rising rather than falling. It’s not because trade with Europe has actually increased because it hasn’t, but trade with the rest of the world hasn't increased either.
Against this backdrop trade secretary Kemi Badenoch is about to begin talks about signing a memorandum of understanding on trade with the US states of New York, Colorado, and Oregon. These are essentially worthless bits of paper that we could have signed as EU members but chose not to.
Colorado has a population of 6 million and Oregon 5 million and even a full trade agreement with either state wouldn’t make any difference to Britain’s overseas trade. It’s displacement activity and really quite pathetic. She is tipped as a possible future leader for heaven’s sake.
The Tories are in for a very long period in opposition.
