Inigo Gurruchaga
Correspondent. London
Thursday, June 20, 2024, 8:28 p.m.
Who thinks of calling an election when the opposition persistently leads you by more than twenty points? To Rishi Sunak, who decided it in relative secrecy, as we will see later, because his plan was working. This Wednesday he was able to boast of new successes, when the Bank of England announced that inflation has fallen to 2%, the central bank’s target.
Hours passed and nothing happened. Until late ‘The Times’ decided to publish the results of a large survey commissioned by the firm YouGov, which gave a round headline: ‘Labour is heading for the biggest electoral victory in a century.’ It would gain 425 MPs, an advantage of 200 in the House of Commons. Rishi Sunak, who says he will remain an MP after defeat, would be part of a Conservative group with 108 members.
Polling firms are using different methods over time and between them, but the trend is shared among those who calculate the averages, about 20 points ahead for Labor over the Conservatives. Both parties have lost percentage points in favor of the Reform, which gives an average of 16% of voting intention and the Liberal Democrats, with 11%.
The latest poll published by the aggregator Britan Elects gives Labor an advantage of only 11 points, but not over the Conservatives but over Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The result notes the current percentage and in parentheses the loss or gain since another survey published seven days ago: Lab 35%(-4), Ref 24%(7), Con 15%(+7).
The firm that obtained these results, People Polling, is directed by academic Matthew Goodwing, Farage’s favorite intellectual and media or think tanks linked to the new ethnicist and iconoclastic right. It is always suspicious that someone predicts extraordinary phenomena, such as the imminent ‘revolt’ of frustrated Brexiters, and obtains the figures to prove it.
In areas of Scotland and Wales, in Cornwall and the south-west of England and some areas of London, the Liberal Party always had seats. Merged with Labor rebels who formed a social democratic party, the Liberal Democrats, or Lib-Dems, had the possibility of returning to Government at the beginning of the 20th century when their leader, Paddy Ashdown, drew up a secret pact with Tony Blair to govern together in 1997. But Labor’s victory was such that it made the plan absurd.
many fronts
Under the leadership of Nick Clegg, it shared the austerity policy after the financial disaster of 2008, with the conservatives of David Cameron and George Osborne. Its leader, Ed Davey, is trying to rebuild the strength of the party, taking advantage of the fatigue with the ‘tories’ to obtain seats in conservative territory with the vote of the voters who are best placed to unseat them.
Osborne, who could not convince his friend Cameron not to call a referendum on the progress of Europe in a country crushed by austerity, now says in his podcast that Sunak is a bad politician, for opting for Brexit and for supporting the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister. He will now have to add to Sunak’s pedigree calling an election at an inopportune time.
After celebrating that inflation has fallen, the Bank of England has left the interest rate at 5.25%, even hurting those in debt with mortgages. Farage played a significant role in Cameron’s downfall and he does so now with Sunak, eroded in every constituency by the presence of Reform. That is the current painful reality of the conservative leader.
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