He looks at crossover points in the polls to show the hard right that they are the problem. In Spring 2021, opinion on Brexit - their flagship policy for three decades - for example, switched as more people said it was “wrong to leave” than “right to leave.” I think he's wrong about the dates, but that's a minor issue.
In December 2021, Labour overtook the Conservatives when Johnson - their champion if only for personal ambition rather than any conviction - was revealed to have overseen a Downing Street in which staff partied during a national lockdown.
Labour’s lead started to become unassailable in September 2022 when Truss - another hero of the nut jobs- had a chaotic if brief occupancy of No 10.
Yet, the Tory extreme right continues to blame anyone who is less right-wing than they are for the party's catastrophic slump in the polls. Ganesh says:
“The Tories are in the national doghouse because of the populist right. To the extent that Sunak is culpable, it is because he is, or at least was, one of them. He supported Brexit. He enabled Johnson. That, not a 19-month premiership, is his contribution to the Conservative predicament. He is unpopular with voters, true, but the Tories could replace him with David Attenborough and still inspire hatred. Their reputation was soiled, perhaps for a decade, in 2021-22.
“No other explanation fits the facts. If the Tories are losing because the Rwanda asylum scheme is dragging, why is Britain about to elect a Labour government that promises to scrap the whole thing 'straightaway'?”
I agree with all of that, but does anyone think they will accept any responsibility? Of course, they will not because politicians rarely do and the more ideologically committed are always far less likely to admit mistakes and errors in their own worldview. This is why the party is on the way out.
The economy
The government hailed a return to growth last week when the ONS announced the economy grew by a surprising 0.6% in the first quarter. This is close to the trend growth rate and it prompted Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the ONS to describe the economy as going “gangbusters.”
Sunak even picked out his comment in PMQs yesterday.
On the face of it, it seems to be good news, although the ONS cautioned the figures are preliminary and could change, but then again they always say that and the initial estimates usually don’t get revised that much.
The news was greeted by David Smith, The Times' economics editor, who writes: If the economy’s going gangbusters, why are trade and jobs down?
And it is indeed true that unemployment has gone UP, exports have gone DOWN, trade intensity has REDUCED, job vacancies are DOWN, the number of people in employment is DOWN and economic inactivity is UP. A puzzle eh?
The answer in part is that the economy shrank slightly in the previous two quarters and is just 0.2% bigger than it was in Q1 2023. Construction was down 0.9% while manufacturing was up 1.4% and consumer spending was down 0.4% on the previous year. Britain is essentially flatlining.
On the inflation front, Smith notes that we are about to get back on track with an announcement next week expected to show the Bank of England getting down to the 2% target. But Smith says this won't herald a cut in interest rates because regular pay has risen by 6% over the past 12 months while productivity, measured by output per hour worked, is up by a mere 0.1%.
Something has to give. Either pay growth must slow sharply or productivity must pick up quickly.
Martin Howe
Martin Howe, one of the Brexit supporting Lawyers for Britain (he's the chairman) has an article in The Telegraph: Britain is paying the price for surrender to the EU. (no £paywall).
This is about the High Court in Northern Ireland ruling that several key sections of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 are not to apply in Northern Ireland because of the Windsor Framework and the ECHR.
Howe is of course one of those Tories who will never admit Brexit was a mistake. He blames "Theresa May’s disastrously botched Withdrawal Agreement." Am I wrong to think it was Boris Johnson who negotiated the WA? But BoJo is a hero of the right so Howe had to find another handy PM to carry the can.
Howe says:
"Both on the Rwanda policy and on Northern Ireland, we have seen from this Government and Prime Minister a pattern of tough talking and boastfulness, but spinelessness and incompetence in actually standing up for the vital interests of this country against the out-of-control European human rights establishment or the European Union."
Sunak negotiated the Windsor Framework, conceding some EU laws would continue to operate in NI in exchange for some easing of trade restrictions. Howe objects and presumably would have negotiated a different agreement and that's fair enough. The question he doesn’t answer is how much more trade friction was he prepared to throw in to get a deal?
Bear in mind that Sunak must have thought it better not to further damage relations between GB and NI traders and between the UK and the USA, but that hasn’t exactly helped his popularity has it?
If he was PM, Howe presumably would now be even lower in the polls, having enraged the Americans, upset the Irish and the EU, ended the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, imposed tariffs on half our exports, and goodness knows what else.
They all accuse others of being spineless until it's their turn to lead - and find they too are faced with the same intractable problems.
