NEW Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces a “very, very substantial challenge” to get the Tories re-elected, according to polling expert Sir John Curtice.
Sir John, professor of politics at Strathclyde University said: “Well, the truth is that the precedent of history indicates that it’s going to be very, very difficult.
“Every previous post war that the British government that presided over a fiscal/financial crisis, did not manage to survive at the ballot box at the next election
Speaking in an interview with Inaya Folarin Iman and Tom Harwood on GB News, he said: “Now, the one thing that’s different is indeed, this is the first fiscal crisis to have brought down the Prime Minister of the time.
“So maybe having a different Prime Minister might make it somewhat easier to persuade the public to forget about what happened during Liz Truss’s short premiership. But voters tend to remember when Governments are essentially forced into economic action they did not want to take as a result of the financial markets. Voters take their cue from the financial markets, that this perhaps is a sign of economic incompetence.
“It’s something that just becomes an add on to their memory, not least, of course, because it often has direct implications for them. So it’s a very, very substantial challenge.”
He said: “John Major at least after Black Wednesday presided over very healthy economic growth. The economic prospects for the next two years are not that good and that’s not going to make the Conservative’s chances of winning the next general election any brighter either.
“Mr Sunak will doubtless be delighted to finally have got the keys to number 10 Downing Street, but he’s going to find the next two years pretty tough if he’s going to extend his tenure beyond the next general election.”
On the current polls, Sir John added: “…We anticipate that the Labour Party will continue to be ahead in the polls, albeit probably not at the level of which they are at the moment, they’re almost inevitably going to start to be subjected to much more scrutiny.
“People are going to hang on the opinion polls…but I think now people will be looking to see, ‘well hang on, what would the Labour Party offer’ and there is still a sense out there – one, Sir Keir Starmer is acceptable but he’s not exciting and, two, a feeling still that people are not entirely sure what the Labour Party stands for.
“Labour now are going to have to be a bit more forthcoming in future about where they stand, about some of the policy detail, in order to be in a sense to cement the deal with the electorate that they do look like an alternative government that perhaps might be able to run things more effectively than the current administration.”
