There was a bit of excitement yesterday about the possibility of a general election in May. I said on Twitter that I couldn’t think of any logical reason why Sunak would go early, rather than wait until the autumn in the hope that something might turn up. OK, there’s an outside chance of a Tory leadership challenge, and an early election would cut off that possibility – but an early election would also end Sunak’s leadership anyway, thus defeating the whole purpose.
Suzanne Blackley responded with a contrary view: she said Sunak would struggle to hold onto power until October and might be contemplating an early election as a way of resigning as Tory leader on his own terms. Another Twitter user suggested the rationale might be to take advantage of the Tories’ local government base by holding the general election on the same day as the English local elections, and thus get more boots on the ground.
I still think it’s unlikely, but even if it’s a 20% chance it’s worth considering what the implications would be. If yesterday’s Redfield & Wilton poll is correct, it’s not just the Tories who need something to turn up – the SNP do too, because they’re currently heading for defeat, at least in terms of seats. Not a crushing defeat, but a defeat just the same. So from that perspective they might be better off with a few more months to see if they can devise a way of turning things around (hint: find a more popular leadership team and revert to a more radical independence strategy).
On the other hand, the earlier the election is, the more likely it is that Gaza will still be at the forefront of voters’ minds. For the vast majority of people that won’t affect how they vote, but I suspect there’s a subset of idealistic, mostly young voters out there who would struggle to vote Labour if Gaza was heavily in their thoughts. A useful comparison might be with the 2003 Holyrood election, which took place only a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq. The circumstances didn’t stop Labour retaining their status as the largest single party, but they suffered a net loss of several seats, and some of that could be directly attributed to the war – most notably the defeat to Mike Pringle of the Liberal Democrats in Edinburgh South, a constituency with a large student population.
A similar phenomenon in a May election this year would be most likely to favour the SNP, and possibly the Greens – although because the Greens can’t win seats, a Green surge would be much less harmful to Labour’s chances of beating the SNP.
