Welcome to the first of PPI’s weekly bulletin charting the course of the UK General Election, from PPI’s Claire Ainsley.
Claire is based in the UK, directing PPI’s project on center-left renewal, and is former director of policy to Labour leader Keir Starmer. She is supporting the Labour campaign, as a media commentator, as well as on the ground ahead of polling day on Thursday 4th July.
The UK is now just four weeks away from what is promising to be the most important election in more than a decade. Incumbent Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took everyone by surprise – including whoever holds the PM’s umbrella, it seems – by making a rain-soaked announcement on the steps of Downing Street that he was calling a General Election months earlier than anyone expected.
With the Conservatives entering the race 20 points behind in the opinion polls, and a large 80-seat majority to defend, it wasn’t immediately obvious why go now. A clue can be found in PPI’s recent research on working-class voters, covered here in the UK Guardian, showing that the Conservatives are under increasing pressure from Reform UK, a new political party that is mobilising voters primarily concerned about immigration. Our poll showed Reform has doubled their support amongst working-class voters between September 2023 and May 2024. The English Channel boat crossings are likely to rise over the summer months, and combined with an economy that voters don’t believe has turned a corner, perhaps Sunak thought things could get worse later in the year.
If anything, things have gotten worse for Sunak, and sooner than he might have expected. The polls have showed little sign of budging in his direction, despite some internal Labour politics clouding an otherwise assured start from the opposition. And on Monday, Nigel Farage decided to abandon his role as a Trump campaign champion, and enter the UK race as the newly-installed leader of Reform UK. Within days, opinion polls are showing that Reform is eating into the Conservative vote in particular. But so too are Reform having an effect on Labour too, with polls showing a dip for both the main parties.
What is underlying all of this is the dissatisfaction voters feel about how ineffective the Conservative government has been at tackling the challenges they face on the issues that matter most to them. This poll from PPI featured in the Mirror shows that working-class voters, a crucial electoral base for the center-left, think the Conservatives are failing them on the economy, the NHS, and on immigration.
So far, we haven’t seen much of a debate about the substance of the programmes and policies that the parties propose to remedy the country’s ills. But with another four weeks to go, and manifestos published in the next fortnight, expect to see a greater competition on policy and more heat on all the parties to convince voters they have the answers they’re looking for.