Tuesday 28 May 2024

The start of the Tory campaign has been a disaster

The fixed-term parliament act was supposed to give the sitting PM an advantage, allowing him or her to spring an election on an under-prepared opposition. You wouldn't think that was the case after the first week of the 2024 campaign. It looks as if Sunak surprised everybody in his own party while Labour was waiting to ambush him from a strong position with all systems primed and ready to go. The Tories need candidates in over 100 seats and are taking a scatter-gun approach to selecting policies for their manifesto. In the last seven days, they have made Gordon Brown’s awful 2010 election campaign look like a model of professionalism.

The rain-soaked announcement in Downing Street set the tone. It was followed by a visit to Belfast outside the shipyard that built the Titanic and the PM pictured on an aircraft just below an exit sign.

It is just asking for trouble. We've had ministers like Steve Baker (he's gone on 5 July for sure) openly critical of the national service plan and the lack of consultation and declaring that he won't be cancelling his holiday plans to campaign in his High Wycombe constituency.

No doubt he was one of the people referred to in the email accidentally sent by CCHQ critical of their own MPs for not kicking off the campaign promptly or doing door-knocking and bemoaning the lack of time to raise funds.

Sunak's chosen election guru, the Australian Isaac Levido, the man supposed to be in charge of the campaign, is said to have been one of the many voices inside the party arguing against an early election. He was ignored. It seems to me Sunak called the election in a fit of pique when something upset him. We will find out what it was one day.

Lucy Allan, Tory MP for Telford who is standing down anyway, clearly doesn't think much of the prime minister and has endorsed the Reform UK candidate in her old constituency.  She must believe we haven't had enough chaos and poor leadership over the last nine years and need a total headcase like Richard Tice at the helm to stir things up.  Sunak has suspended her although she claims to have quit - like a lot of others including the chair of Birmingham Young Conservatives:

Gove stepping down perhaps gives us a clue not only to how bad things are in the Tory party at the moment but how much worse the situation is going to be after the election. Privately, he can’t look back with any satisfaction or pride at what he and the Tory party have achieved over the last 14 years.

He scuppered Johnson’s chances in 2016, only to help the priapic idiot win in 2019 just in time to coincide with the Covid pandemic. Could there have been anyone worse in Downing Street during that crisis?  The Covid inquiry is still hearing evidence about his handling of the worst public health emergency in more than a century.  The scale of corruption in sourcing PPE is only topped by the death toll and the economic damage, for which we are still paying the price. 

Of all people, Gove knew just how unsuitable, incapable, and chaotic Johnson was but still inflicted him on the nation anyway.

The Tory campaign has been overshadowed by Labour who have now been endorsed by 120 business leaders in a letter to The Times.  On YouTube, virtually everything I've watched over the last few days has been preceded by a slickly produced Labour campaign advert featuring Kier Starmer or Rachel Reeves. And very good they look too.

I know the Tories are headed for a big defeat but I think the scale of it is going to shock us.  Rejoice, as Mrs Thatcher might have said.

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