'Here's why it's an election on May 2 or bust for Rishi Sunak'
On International Women's Day, the country's second female Prime Minister decided to throw in the towel.
Theresa May will bow out of Parliament, clamber into one of her own Go Home vans, and tootle off into the sunset to concentrate on the more enjoyable issues of slavery and human trafficking rather than waste any more of her life watching another successor spaff it up the wall.
When looking at the Maidenhead MP from the other side of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, she seems like a titanic figure of competence and decency. But from the perspective of the 2017 general election, with the constitution in disarray, Northern Ireland in flames and Tories starting to eat each other, she was a no-hope loser we were best off without.
It's her loss in 2017 which Rishi Sunak clings to in the wee hours, hoping the polls which were wrong then could be wrong now. But it's more complicated than that, and if he doesn't call an election by the end of the month he'll end up with an even worse record than Liz Truss.
"But I was right! Wasn't I?" (PA)When Theresa went to the country in 2017, she needed to unify her party, and thought with a bigger majority she could push through a Brexit that might actually work. She forgot everything else. The campaign endured two terror attacks, her record as Home Secretary was criticised, and tuition fees helped Jeremy Corbyn make gains. There were also local elections in the middle of the campaign, and when asked to go to the polling station a second time a few weeks later, not enough people could be bothered to vote Tory twice.
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Rishi wants his next election to be about Rwanda and immigration, but it'll only ever be about the economy. Voters have wanted to punish the Tories since Barnard Castle, and have had to endure Matt Hancock's dancing, Baroness Mone's PPE investigation, and Partygate without a single opportunity to deliver the bloody nose that is now overdue. People are angriest about inflation, and have a general dislike and distrust of a party that seems venal and corrupt. Rishi might have forgotten some of that, but no-one else has.
During the disastrous reigns of Johnson and Truss, Theresa gained the status of a Tory grande dame, gamely doing her best from the backbenches to show what calm and reason looked like and occasionally staring daggers from behind the incumbent PM. She has a fine legacy from the Hillsborough inquests and the infected blood inquiry. But as a minister she was ham-fisted, as a PM out of her depth, and if even the wife of a Berkshire banker has decided to consciously uncouple from the Conservatives, then there is little of that party left.
Rishi gave away £10bn to voters in the Budget, and the first poll since shows he dropped two points. He's undertaking pre-election visits and insisting, like Theresa, that "nothing has changed". He has no legacy to leave, no thirst for the backbenches and bill committees, no hope from the polls. Why *would* he call an election now, when he could cling on to power for another six months?
Rishi has no wish to be visiting a police station in Harlow in the rain. He does not need to be booed out of cafes, or keep taking flak from Alan Bates. Since he declared he was aiming for autumn, he's lost two by-elections and is facing a third, Lee Anderson's been as racist as hell, and we've welcomed so many migrants on boats they would fill a Premier League football stadium. MP after MP has announced they're standing down at the next election, giving their constituencies just weeks or months to prepare and field a replacement anyone would recognise.
He's not in the job for the money. Boris craved power and relevance, while Rishi craves privacy for his family's millions. The Tory grassroots face an electoral bloodbath on May 2, and the leader of their party isn't even the one they voted for.
This year Rishi will, like Theresa did, be asking people to vote Tory twice. Like her, he'll be asking them to vote on a massive issue he cannot fix. And voters are angry about everything else, while seeing a party for whom cannibalism is now a cliché. If he leaves it until after he's lost all his activists on May 2, there'll be no-one left to put up posters or knock on doors.
His questions and answers are the same as Theresa's in 2017. Why call an election now, when things look so bad? Because there's nothing to indicate it'll get better. Why risk power when he could cling on? Because that's not why he does it. Why not pray that events, dear boy, events, will come along to save him? Because terror attacks, school roof collapses, and Royal deaths will only make things worse.
The Rwanda bill gets Royal Assent and becomes law on March 20. If he can get even one half-empty plane in the air, Rishi will call an election on March 26, which means it can be held, as most general elections are, on the same day as the locals. You may have to vote twice, but it's on the same piece of paper and at the same time; you're far more likely to do it.
To Rishi, Rwanda is make or break. To most of the country it's a minor matter. But the real reason he'll go for an early election is exactly the same reason that befuddled, bedevilled, Brexit-crazed Theresa did it in 2017.
As PM, both have had any hope crushed. They've had to deal with things beyond their ken and control, and had no choice in any of it. Every leader in history has found there are only so many economic and party levers, each with a life of their own. If a PM holds out until the last minute to call an election, it's just one more thing they have no choice in. But if they call it early, they still have influence: the ego risks a battering, but it is cushioned by the fact they chose it.
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Vanity gets people to Downing Street, and vanity ejects them again. That's why, for Rishi, it's May 2 or bust.
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