Winning five elections in a row is something no party has managed in modern times, and there are reasons for that.
Voters tire of the ruling party and want something new and fresh. Even more importantly, being in power for a long time increases the chances of bad stuff happening that tarnishes the government’s reputation. In the last 50 years, there has been a recession or economic crisis every 10 years or so on average: the mid 1970s, the early 80s, the early 90s, the late 2000s and the early 2020s.
The UK’s periodic economic struggles mean that, with hindsight, there have been some elections that were good to lose.
It was handy for the Conservatives to be kicked out of office in 1974 because it meant they did not have to clear up the mess they had made of the economy. It was Labour that had to contend with 25% inflation, industrial unrest and the arrival of a team from the International Monetary Fund demanding spending cuts in return for a loan. The Tories then returned to power in 1979 with North Sea oil at their disposal.
Likewise, Labour was fortunate to lose in 1992 because, had it not done so, it would have been Neil Kinnock rather than John Major who would have faced the humiliation of the pound being ejected from the European exchange rate mechanism by the relentless attacks of currency speculators. Black Wednesday would have occurred whichever party was in power.
But despite some healthy competition, 2019 is in a class of its own as an election worth losing. There was plenty of speculation after Boris Johnson’s decisive victory that Labour was washed up as a political force. Now it is the Conservatives who are facing an existential crisis, with the polls suggesting a defeat worse than 1997.
Rishi Sunak faces the usual problems facing the leader of a party that has been in power for a long time: boredom, and the need to defend the government’s record. A much bigger problem, though, is that since 2019 the Conservatives have had to grapple with not one but three massive economic shocks, each one of which has sapped confidence and support for the party.
The fact that two of the shocks were not of the government’s making has counted for little. There is some rough justice in this. The Conservatives came to power in 2010 after falsely blaming Gordon Brown’s Labour government for what was clearly a global financial crisis. Now they are getting some of the same treatment, and the result is likely to be the same: an unforgiving electorate booting the government that presided over a crisis (or, in this case, a rolling series of crises) out of office.
It was only weeks after the 2019 election that the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the UK. The virus spread rapidly and, in March, Johnson announced a national lockdown that forced all but essential workers to stay at home. Workers who would otherwise have lost their jobs had their wages subsidised by the government through a furlough scheme. There were cash grants, tax holidays, and soft loans to keep businesses afloat. All this came at a price: the loss of tax revenue coupled with higher public spending meant the state borrowed more than £300bn to balance the books in 2020-21. The longer-term consequences – the loss of schooling, the longer NHS waiting lists, the increased incidence of labour market inactivity due to ill-health – were massive and will have an effect for years to come.
Throughout this period, a right-of-centre government willingly chose to adopt measures normally associated with parties of the centre left. The workforce was effectively nationalised, macro-economic policy became interventionist, and the Tory desire to balance the books was ditched in favour of borrowing as much as it took to sustain activity.
For a while, Sunak was the most Keynesian chancellor of modern times. And – while he was handing out what seemed to be free money – the most popular.
The ending of lockdown restrictions brought a different set of problems, not only in the UK but across the global economy. Consumers had built up savings during the worst of the pandemic and wanted to spend them. Demand exceeded supply and bottlenecks resulted. Inflation started to rise and central banks – wary of the risk of pushing economies back into recession – for a while did nothing.
Enter Vladimir Putin, who in February 2022 sent Russian troops into Ukraine. The economic impact of the invasion was swift and profound: energy and food prices soared, giving an added twist to already rising inflationary pressures. The government stepped in to subsidise energy bills, but this second external shock helped send inflation to a four-decade high of 11.1%, reduced living standards, put renewed pressure on the public finances and prompted an aggressive tightening of policy from the Bank of England. Interest rates were raised from 0.1% to 5.25% in little more than a year and a half.
Johnson’s Downing Street scandals meant he was toppled as prime minister in the summer of 2022 and replaced in early September by Liz Truss. This resulted in the third – but this time self-inflicted – crisis of the period since 2019: the run on sterling and the near-collapse of UK pension funds triggered by Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Mortgage rates soared.
A degree of stability has returned since Sunak replaced Truss after her 49 days in office, but living standards are lower than they were at the start of the parliament and taxes have risen. The economy is growing again and inflation is only just above the government’s 2% target, but it is all far too little, far too late. There will be no fifth victory.
