I was in London the day Rishi Sunak called the UK general election. Usually, elections are defined by events that occur in the course of the campaign. In this case, it was defined the moment it began. Unbelievably, Sunak’s advisers let him make the announcement standing outside the iconic black door of 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain.
As the drenched prime minister made his case for re-election, the optics could not possibly have been worse, nor the newspaper headlines they predictably inspired: “Things Can Only Get Wetter”; “Drowning Street”; “Washout”.
Keir Starmer campaigning in Worcester on Wednesday. The Labour leader is at unbackable odds to become the next British PM.Credit: AP
The announcement was completely unexpected. The election did not have to be held until January, and was widely expected to be in November. With the Tories more than 20 points behind Labour, their desperate hope was that, in the next few months, there was still just enough time to turn things around. If the public could be persuaded that the government deserved credit for recent good economic news (falling inflation, lower unemployment, easing of the cost of living), and should not take the risk of losing the hard-won gains with a Labour government, the Tories were still in with a (slender) chance.
By calling the election early, Sunak squandered that opportunity.
Senior Tories with whom I spoke were incandescent with rage. One, who is among the party’s biggest donors, offered the scathing assessment that, by calling the election now, Sunak had effectively conceded he couldn’t win; sick of being a dead man walking, he just wanted to get the defeat over with sooner rather than later.
Since the election was called, the freefall has gathered pace: the first major opinion poll of the campaign, published on Saturday, had the Tories winning just 66 seats to Labour’s 476. (Yes, you read that correctly.) As Labour prepares to return to Downing Street, attention turns to the presumptive next prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
Starmer with former prime minister Liz Truss following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, 2022.Credit: AP
On the evening Sunak called the election, I happened to be having dinner with former PM Liz Truss. Eager to spice this column with a revealing anecdote, I asked her if she had any interesting or amusing stories about Starmer. She couldn’t think of any. Next, I asked one of my Labour friends, who knows Starmer well. Once again, I drew a blank. Nothing interesting to say. No quirky stories. No fun facts. Plain vanilla. Which is how I found him when, as high commissioner, we had meetings on a couple of occasions: courteous, businesslike and inscrutable.
After the rollercoaster of the past decade, featuring the shock of Brexit, the wild ride of Boris Johnson, the incessant Tory civil wars, being boring works for Starmer. He brings an aura of stability to an exhausted country. It also makes him difficult to define. To get a sense of the man, it is best to ask what he is not.