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OOn the day before the 1992 general election, Ascot bookies were offering odds of 6-1 against John Major’s Conservatives winning. I was with the economist Roger Bootle and we agreed Labor, well ahead in the polls, should have won. It was pointless to bet the Tories, even at those odds. When the results came in, we kicked ourselves.
When I told Lord Kinnock, the Labor leader at the time, this story years later, he quipped that I should have phoned him from Ascot. He said that on his return from campaigning in South Wales the week before, he and his wife Glenys had the nagging feeling that, despite the polls, the election was “slipping away”.
We come to the upcoming general election on the 4th of July, the campaigns for which already seem boring, not to say boring, to so many people. Labor consistently leads the polls, while the splintering Conservatives are seen as heading for a historic defeat.
This time, the bookmakers’ odds are very different. At the time of writing they are quoting 30-1 against the Tories, while Labor are 1-41 to win the most seats – meaning a £41 bet on Labor will only set you back £1.
Most people seem to think that labor is competitive security, even though they don’t respect it Keir Starmer as inspirational.
The nation has had enough of the impact of austerity, not least in the NHS. And Brexit is proving to be a bigger disaster by the day. The self-harm of removing freedom of movement affects so many areas of life and bureaucratic restrictions on trade are causing serious damage to the business and therefore to us the customers.
The two major parties made the very topic for Brexit no-go zone – the Tories because they are responsible for it and Labor because, even though they were right about Brexit, they are afraid of alienating the so-called Red Wall voters who left it last time.
We are facing a general election five years after a landslide victory for the Conservatives, won on the back of the slogan “Get Brexit done”. Well the Tories did and now they are done.
Brexit has resulted in casualties everywhere. Even as I write, surprise news is hitting the airwaves that Labour’s plans for a major housing program are likely to be stymied by shortage of construction workers caused by the xenophobic attitude towards our former European partners, which led to the exodus of Eastern European construction workers.
I say Labour’s plans now because – regardless of my cautionary tale about the 1992 election, the result of which has haunted Labor ever since – there is little doubt that the Conservatives are in for a blow on July 4th. People, frankly, have had enough.
His lies about Labour’s tax plans are just one of the many own goals that Rishi Sunak has scored. Indeed, the Liz Truss fiasco damaged the Tories – for which Sunack was not responsible – but it was not only that. This government is established, as the accumulated austerity damage since 2010 strikes most people in one way or another.
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Sunak was a Brexiteer from the start. The dramatic negative impact of leaving the single market was reflected in the nation’s miserable growth. The Center for European Reform has estimated that the UK’s annual tax revenue it would have been around £40 billion higher if the country had not left the EU. Those losses forced both main parties to deny they planned to raise taxes, and the British public to tell pollsters it believed taxes would be raised anyway. As Robert Shrimsley of Financial Times says: “The Conservative Party has become the latest victim of Brexit.”
Symbolically for the bottom to which the party has fallen, the prime minister has imposed himself sorry for leaving the D Day celebration insultingly early to attend a TV interview in London where he denied lying on Labour’s tax plans.
As a friend of mine quipped, “Finally a [Brexit] the prime minister apologizes for leaving Europe.
Brexit is fast becoming a tragedy. As what happened after D-Day reminds us, stability and peace in post-WWII Europe was the achievement of an economically united Europe – until the Brexit disaster.
The Russians are moving into Ukraine and fears of further revanchism by Moscow in Eastern Europe place a huge onus on the Starmer government.
Economically, Starmer’s ambitions for growth require a closer relationship with the EU, not least the single market. And to meet the wider geopolitical threat, especially if a future President Donald Trump distances himself from Europe, we in the UK must stop distancing ourselves.
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