General election 2024: Rishi Sunak must have decided things are only going to get worse

As the rain spattered down on his freshly pressed suit, the Prime Minister caught almost all of Westminster, including many Tory MPs, off guard by calling a summer poll on 4 July. Sunak referenced his time bringing in the furlough scheme and told the nation he had never been “prouder to be British”. 

However, Sunak was embarrassingly drowned out repeatedly by protesters blaring out the New Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better from behind the Downing Street gates. And while Sunak made his first pitch to the country, saying he had a “clear plan and bold action”, the message he was actually sending was that things can only get worse. 

As I cannot think why else he would call a general election now. The Tories are trailing by more than 20 points in almost every poll, with some election analysts predicting their MPs might drop to double figures. It’s not normal for a sitting Prime Minister to call an early election when his party is likely to get decimated.

Interest rates are still sitting at a 15-year high, leaving homeowners and renters being hammered, and no sign the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee is going to cut them when it meets next month.

And the Prime Minister has still not got a single flight of asylum seekers off the ground to Rwanda, other than the one man who went voluntarily, with his signature “stop the boats” policy still getting mired in legal action. In fact small boat crossings are at a record high at this stage of the year.

The only bright spark for Sunak was April’s CPI inflation figure almost reaching the Bank of England’s 2% target today. And it appears that pushed the PM to call a general election now, instead of using the Tories’ September conference and Autumn Statement to propel himself into an October or November election. At the first campaign rally on Wednesday evening, Sunak declared inflation was “back to normal” and repeated that the economy “had turned a corner”.

But beyond inflation, the question once again comes back to why? Why call an election a few weeks after the locals when voters were going to the polls anyway? This was something that Sunak did not explain in his speech, all he said was “now is the moment for Britain to choose its future”.

Tory MPs don’t appear to understand the Prime Minister’s logic. I’ve witnessed several high-profile MPs walking around the Parliamentary estate shrugging their shoulders angrily. It’s clear though there’s only one reason Sunak would relinquish power months before he had to, and that’s because things can only get worse.

The situation with overcrowding in prisons is clearly not going to be resolved quickly. The Times reported today that police chiefs were told to arrest fewer people as prisons are at their limit, something No10 denied. Already, the chief inspector of prisons has revealed high-risk criminals have been released early, despite protestations from penitentiary staff.

Thames Water’s dire financial situation will come to a head soon, with an expectation that the government may have to step in - presumably at great cost. Sunak committed this week to paying out full compensation to the infected blood victims, which could cost upwards of £10 billion. Some commentators believe this has taken all of Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal headroom, which he had been stashing for further tax cuts in the autumn. And there’s a feeling that inflation may soon start to tick back up.

Ultimately, Rishi Sunak has decided that things are only going to get worse.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.