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A failed gamble? How the Tory election campaign imploded

  • July 4, 2024



A failed gamble? How the Tory election campaign imploded

if you want to understand why the last six weeks have seemed so chaotic for the Tories really you’ve got to go back to party gate Boris Johnson’s departure Liz truss’s lce era that at that point in the eyes of a lot of the public their mind was already made up or at least they were on a direction of travel towards giving labor a chance because we’re a government in waiting and they’re an opposition they’re an opposition in Waiting the S started with rishy sunak thinking he could pull off one of the greatest comebacks in British electoral history and overturn a massive labor lead and then he went out in the rain to tell the nation that he was going to call the election earlier today I spoke with his majesty the king to request the dissolution of Parliament and it went very downhill very fast are you caping a s chip going into this election there was the fact that rishy sunak returned home early from the D-Day celebrations on reflection that was a mistake and I apologize but he returned home early to do an ITV News interview incredible but it it just ran over everything so apologies for keeping you in that ITV News interview he was asked what he’d gone without as a kid famously Sky TV so one thing that no one thought would dominate two weeks of the campaign was the fact that politicians were placing bets on the date of the election I saw the headline and I was like what I mean do do these people have a death wish this is really just us all seeing the final explosion of a long running disaster the conservatives were the ones who pulled the switch and yet were scrambling to find people to stand in a lot of seats and didn’t even seem to have much of a strategy in terms of how they’re going to fight it probably the biggest uncontrollable factor that has destroyed Rishi Sun’s campaign is the arrival of midro farage these boring idiots that LE the labor and conservative parties are not worth the space if that hadn’t happened the conservatives could be looking at maybe 40 50 more seats it’s quite clear that a vote for reform all it’s going to do is help K starm this is just such an incredible thing that was out of Sun’s control but farage himself has said that he would probably have been in the states campaigning with Donald Trump for a November us election that core decision to go early is now looking like a really catastrophic call even before this election was called most of the country had already made up their mind that they wanted a change from the conservatives I’m asking if you would confess to us tonight even just a small amount of embarrassment and voters love to back a winner they can see that K is a in the polls and they quite want to be on on The Winning Side humans are fascinating weird characters but there’s that sense that when someone’s time is up when they no longer have the ability to change things that they are just no longer in power they technically have the office but they’re not there and I think that more than anything is what you’ve seen in this campaign

From the moment six weeks ago that Rishi Sunak announced the election in pouring rain outside 10 Downing Street, his campaign has faced a series of setbacks.
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From has seen the backlash triggered by his early return from a D-day commemoration, to a betting scandal in which a Conservative politician was discovered to have bet on the date of the election, the Guardian’s political media editor, Jim Waterson, explains how the party’s campaign fell apart and whether it stood a chance to begin with

Polls project a record swing to the Labour party, larger than in any previous postwar election. The Conservatives go into election day having lost more than half of their support, and polling more than 10 points below their worst ever previous result

What time will we know who won? Hour-by-hour guide to election night ► https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/04/what-time-will-we-know-who-won-hour-by-hour-guide-election-night-2024

Ten things to watch as the UK general election results roll in ► https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/30/ten-things-to-watch-as-the-uk-general-election-results-roll-in

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#politics #ukelection #generalelection #KeirtStarmer #RishiSunak #Labour #Conservative #ReformUK #LibDems #NigelFarage #EdDavey #GreenParty

43 comments

  2. @NefetariMoonRay
    0 seconds ago
    IF PUTIN HAD BEEN GIVEN EASIER ACCESS TO BRUTALISE EUROPE, BY THE LETTING DOWN OF THE UKRAINE, THEN THE COSTS TO OUR COUNTRY WOULD HAVE BEEN ' THOUSANDS' OF TIMES GREATER'. AS EUROPE IS OUR TRADING PARTNER. AND THE COST OF THE DEFENCE WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE. AND SO EFFECTIVELY,
    BY DOING THE RIGHT THING, TO DEFEND EUROPE IN G7 UNITY, PM RISHI', HAS PROBABLY SAVED THE BRITISH PUBLICS PURSE STRINGS BY THOUSANDS OF TIMES.
    THEREFORE HE IS A MAN WORTHY OF THE BRITISH PUBLICS VOTE. OWING TO THE FAIR RECOGNITION THAT. 'MR STARMER', HAS ALSO PROMISED TO KEEP THE SAME CONDITIONS AS THE TORY PARTY FOR OUR FUTURE PROTECTION AND OUR SECURITY.
    Show less

  3. Total underpolling of Reform support. Millions reject the Tories and Labour. Millions want something better. Two fingers up to the establishment. Break the system. Vote Reform X, Vote Reform X, Vote Reform.

  4. As someone more used to the US election system, I find it fascinating and even baffling that someone can just dissolve a parliament at will… and also that the election date is subject to such dissolution. Isn’t it just better to have a fixed term and a fixed election date to eliminate any uncertainty?

  5. Billionaire opposing minimal wage of 3,5 pound an hour necessary to keep millions of poor working class surviving capitalist exploitaitation, should have never been British PM, SHAME ON ANYONE VOTING TORIES

  8. In an article for Winchester College in 1996, as 16 year old student RISHI SUNAK bitterly opposes Labor Party,s proposed minimum wage of 3,5 pound an hour.Billionaire opposing minimal wage of 3,5 pound an hour necessary to keep millions of poor working class surviving capitalist exploitaitation, should have never been British PM

  16. With Reform around there is credible opposition to Labour. Border Control revolution wont happen because even Labour supported the HORF, plus £28bn committed to Ukraine's war wont be spent on any public services.

  20. Yeah The People Have Spoken
    Call a snap election with no proven tenure and performance on record
    That's what u get even if u rich n privileged Sunak 😘😘

  26. So it’s not abt a country that would rather vote another Caucasian but would never vote a -1st brown PM. It all comes down to skin Color, UK showed its absolute true colors, the country never wanted a brown PM. They’d rather rot with the labor party as it was our white. For all the gravy you can spout, if you look at the data from 2019 to now 2024, constituency to each other, the turnout #’s and how many abstained, well the country would always want to elect a white guy than a central conservative.

  27. After the distractions and lies of Brexit, no wonder the Labourites won. The Tories went further and further to the right. There isn’t a middle ground in UK politics, interesting to see the jump of support for LDPs. Your Reform party amounted to nothing, being right of the Tories, really.

  28. Nobody would ever say it and the guardian and its readers would never admit it in a million years. But he lost due to racism.

  30. I don't think it was a failed gamble. I think he just wanted to get out of No. 10 ASAP. Now the country is other people's problem.

  32. Sunak didn't want to win, he did everything he could to throw the fight. He deliberately handed power to Starmer. I feel rather uneasy about why he would do this.

  38. The conservatives decided not to agree to Farage's ultimatum.
    They decided to let their political party implode… rather than being pushed into a full stop ( five year period ) of immigration.
    Whether this was their own decision, or directly from their party donors… is up for speculation.
    But businesses in the UK do not want a stop to immigration. You must continually feed Capitalism, or it dies.
    This is why Farage and the tories were so antagonistic towards each other. 
    It was better for the donors, to let the tory party 's grip on government slip.
    For they already have Labour fully onboard with continuing maximum immigration levels.

  39. Nah, it wasn't a gamble. I personally think something was found out about Sunak or some senior Tory MPs that the party judged it couldn't survive (more partygate stuff? I couldn't say).

    Think about it: why would Sunak announce the election in the pouring rain with very little warning? It's not like the day he was announcing it was a nice, sunny day, and it just happened to start raining mid-speech; it was miserable all day. Sunak could have waited overnight.

    Either that or his party basically said "you have to do this now, or we're removing you tomorrow".

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