No, don’t worry – I’m not going to be commenting on every day of the 2024 general election. The past 24 hours are more than enough! This is going to be a long six weeks as Sunak has already set the bar low. So low he’s limbo-dancing! Yesterday’s fiasco outside Downing St was merely the start. Today we’ve learned that he’s managed to piss-off many of his own MPs and Cabinet – none of whom knew he was calling an election. Yep, in typical ‘head boy’ style he didn’t think it worth consulting (or forewarning) his own Ministers (and certainly not his lobby-fodder, the backbenchers) over his decision. Understandably, many are furious. They’re about to have their careers cut short and their holiday plans ruined in order to fight a kamikaze election they can’t possibly win. It seems the word on the Tory streets was they could expect an autumn election so had time to prepare one way or another. Instead, the shit hits the fan in 42 days. Mind you, Sunak has form for making big (bad) decisions off his own bat. The Covid enquiry is hearing how no-one (who mattered) was consulted on ‘Eat Out To Help Out’, just like they weren’t consulted when Sunak took it upon himself to cancel large chunks of HS2. Now there’s the general election. His sense of entitlement comes across when he’s being interviewed, hence his tetchiness when someone dares question his decision-making.
In the meantime, Sunak’s hit the campaign trail, and the gaffes are as regular as London buses. In Wales he visited a brewery (the jokes just write themselves really) where he asked people how they were looking forward to the European football championships. A punter pointed out that Wales wasn’t in them as they didn’t qualify – and not one of his army of PR people had thought to check that fact! Cue awkward looks…
It was even worse at a heavily controlled and choreographed visit to a biscuit factory, where a small groups of ‘workers’ were mean to feed him prepared questions. It turned out that two of the workers asking them were actually local Tory Cllrs cunningly disguised in high-vis vests to blend in. Needless to say, the were easily recognised and the event blew up in Sunak’s face. I said yesterday that he has no spontaneity and his team would do their best to keep him away from ordinary members of the public, but this was just as big a disaster.
To add to the farce, today two Tory Ministers announced they were standing down at the election. Will this become a stampede I wonder? One of them was the MP for Bexhill and Transport Minister for rail and HS2, Huw Merriman. I was extremely critical of Huw in this recent blog, ‘never trust a Tory’ due to his extremely ill-judged comments on HS2 funding being ‘diverted’ to the Hope Valley route. His claims did his reputation no favours at all. To his credit, he admitted his error on the ‘Green Signals’ podcast, although I felt his contrition should have gone as far as deleting his Tweets (which still remain).
However, there’s no doubt that Huw was a decent member and later Chair of the Transport Select Ctte and has done some good work in his job as a junior Minister which has earned him praise from parts of the rail industry. The big calls (like scrapping HS2) were made way above his pay-grade but he was still expected to defend the indefensible. Notwithstanding that, he has spent a lot of time listening to voices within the industry so will (according to informed sources) leave a positive legacy because of some of the calls he was able to make.
From my perspective, I’d say whatever’s left of the Tory party will be the poorer for the departure of MPs like Merriman. God knows, the Tory talent pool is shallow enough as it is. What it’ll look like after the expected bloodbath on July 4th should worry everyone, no matter what their politics are.
No doubt the gaffes will continue. Sunak just can’t help himself and the team he has around him are so hopeless and unprepared they’re unable to prevent them. I suspect his polling is going make interesting reading in a weeks time. At this rate we’re moving from the landslide to bloodbath scale of elections…
I’ll refrain from commenting until next week.
In the meantime, I’m back on the community rail trail tomorrow with the final day of Community Rail Week. Expect a rolling blog tomorrow.!
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