BARELY a week ago, Rishi Sunak assured Sun columnist Jane Moore and her fellow Loose Women we were safe to book our summer holidays.
Hapless Tory MP Matt Warman was yesterday cleared by Downing Street to dismiss rumours of an early election.
Hours later, a rain-sodden PM startled the nation — including his own Cabinet and Tory MPs — by asking the King for a snap poll on July 4.
The only upside about going so early is that the downside of hanging on is so bleak.
How will that go down with millions of soccer-mad punters as wall-to-wall Euros coverage is interrupted by political hustlers ringing their doorbells?
Sure, inflation plunged this week from a painful 11.1 per cent to just over 3 per cent, with more falls to come.
Interest rates and mortgage costs will follow suit.
UK growth is outpacing our European rivals.
But we will not see planeloads of illegal migrants flying to Rwanda.
Indeed boatloads are setting new records.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is an average 21 points ahead in the polls.
Reform has grabbed Tory votes.
The Greens and SNP will refuse to do business with Rishi, even if he scores a hung parliament.
There is one slender hope.
Voters who must now choose where to place their X on the ballot paper in challenging times might finally begin to scrutinise Starmer and his promises.
If so, some who have vowed never to vote Tory again might feel queasy about putting Labour in power.
Labour stalwarts admit there is no love for Starmer or his party, no manifesto and no plan for the economy.
Labour will be soft on immigration, ditching the Rwanda plan just as it takes off and dishing out visas at tens of thousands of illegals already here.
These are the battlefields for wavering votes over the next six weeks.
Polling guru Sir John Curtice last night hailed Rishi’s snap poll as “either very brave or very foolhardy”.
“We will discover in the early hours of July 5 which is correct,” he said.
By Kate Ferguson, Sun on Sunday Political Editor
So, why has the PM suddenly decided to roll the dice and call a summer election?
The first thing to point out is that No10 was not united on the decision.
One camp, led by the Tory Party’s chief strategist Isaac Levido, had urged the PM to “go long” and wait until October or November to hold an election.
This would give them more time to show the economy is improving and let the Bank of England cut interest rates, they argued.
This in turn would let banks cut mortgage rates, which are currently crippling family budgets.
Only then would people start to feel financially better off.
But another team, led by the PM’s Political Secretary James Forsyth, have been pushing for a summer election.
Now, it is important to note that James is Rishi’s best mate.
They have known each other since school, are godparents to each other’s kids, and Rishi was best man at James’ wedding.
They are more than just political colleagues. They are besties.
Anyway, James’ camp reckons Rishi can now finally show he is achieving all five of the priorities he set out when he became PM.
These are – halve inflation, get the economy growing, get debt falling, cut NHS waiting lists and pass new laws to stop the boats.
On the economy, the PM will point out that growth is up, wages are rising and inflation is down to 2.3 per cent – almost bang on target.
NHS waiting lists also dropped for the fourth month in a row, according to official figures out last month.
And on stopping the boats, the PM has managed to pass laws enacting his flagship Rwanda deportation plan.
The thinking is – strike while the iron is hot and you can put five big ticks by your promises.
But there is also grim news for No10 that has nudged them into calling a summer election.
Their flagship Rwanda Bill has passed parliament and is now law. But hopes they will get a flight off the ground this year are fading fast.
Northern Ireland’s HIgh Court ruled that the plan breached human rights laws and therefore should not apply in NI.
This paved the way for English laws to also reject it.
Meanwhile, small boat crossings are going up again.
A whole summer of damaging headlines showing boats on the shores of Dover will only feed a sense that No10 does not have a grip.
Rishi is famously straight laced.
He doesn’t drink, he has never taken drugs, and he is not a gambler.
But he has staked it all on a July 4 election.
Will he come up trumps? Or will he lose it all?
By Jack Elsom, Chief Political Correspondent
Economy
Both Tories and Labour will want to stake a claim as the party of economic stability and prosperity.
Previous elections show that voters tend to reward the incumbent government if they feel better off – and punish them if they do not.
Sunak – an unashamed numbers bod – is most comfortable when defending his economic record and has a flurry of recent victories to sell.
Inflation has been sharply reduced to within touching distance of the 2 per cent target, Britain has exited recession, and the IMF has projected strong growth.
He will also point to a recent spate of tax cuts – and almost certainly promise some more if he were to win.
Labour will aim to trash that record and ask voters whether they really feel better than they did 14 years ago when the Tories first got to power.
Expect Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves to remind the public of Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-Budget.
But having backed most of the government’s future tax and spend plans, their challenge will be to prove they would do things any differently.
Immigration
Tackling immigration is shaping up to be the central election dividing line between the Tories and Labour.
Sunak has staked his political life on getting flights off to Rwanda, while Starmer has vowed to axe them altogether.
Were the PM to get a plane to Kigali before polling day, the pressure would be on Labour to justify scrapping a visible possible deterrent.
Labour has struggled to explain its policy to curb Channel crossings in a way that cuts through clearly with voters.
The Tories have dismissed their “Small Boats Command” as a rip-off of an existing anti-gangs taskforce.
But the numbers are currently not in Sunak’s favour, with illegal migration running at a higher rate than any year on record.
And legal migration is still stubbornly high and miles off Boris Johnson’s 2019 pledge of 250,000.
Crime
In recent months both Sunak and Starmer have made big pitches as being tough on law and order.
Realising voters are fed up with crime going unanswered and unsolved, expect them to talk in the strongest terms about cracking down on theft, shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.
Crime has traditionally been comfortable Tory territory and Sunak will likely make pledges about giving police more powers to blitz yobs.
But Starmer has spied an opportunity to park Labour tanks on his lawn and has been hamming up his previous career as a top prosecutor.
War
The world is becoming more dangerous and the public is looking at Sunak and Starmer to keep them safe.
Sunak will point to his recent pledge to ramp up defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 – and seize on Starmer’s refusal to match that.
Labour has outlined an “ambition” to hit that target but is yet to spell out a pathway to fund it, accusing ministers of cooking the books.
And expect Tory MPs to dredge up Starmer’s years-long support for Jeremy Corbyn.
Middle East
A knock-on effect of global unrest is the domestic reaction to the war in Gaza, which has the possibility to seriously hurt Labour.
Many of the party’s once-solid Muslim support base are furious with Starmer’s support for Israel, and previous suggestion it had a right to cut the water and electricity supply.
The conflict cost Labour in several councils at this month’s local elections at the expense of pro-Gaza Green and independent candidates.
As the campaign develops and the Gaza bombardment continues, Starmer will be forced to walk a tightrope over placating his Muslim supporters without being too hard on Israel.
NHS
Cutting NHS waiting lists is the single pledge Sunak has openly admitted he is failing to hit.
He has blamed the lack of progress on endless strikes, but now rarely talks about it as an issue compared to the economy and immigration.
Labour on the other hand see it as home turf and will be hammering the government’s handling of the health service.
Polls consistently put the NHS as one of the public’s top priorities and Starmer will look to weaponise the groaning backlog.
But he will be forced to defend the Welsh Labour administration’s record which is arguably worse than the Tories’.
Stability or change?
Do voters want to stick with what they know, or is there an appetite for change?
The question cuts to the heart of the election, with both leaders sensing mileage in the other.
After being dealt a bad hand, Sunak has insisted he has turned things around and put the country on course for a “brighter future”.
He says Starmer would “take us back to square one.”
For his part, Starmer insists that “stability is change” and a switching of the guard is desperately needed.
Time will tell which way the voters fall.
The latest Betfair Exchange odds on which party will win the general election are:
