The launch of the Conservative election campaign was a tale of two pep talks by Rishi Sunak — and the second, at 2.15pm on Saturday, was, in part, an effort to cheer people up after the first. After spending the night in his North Yorkshire home with his family, the prime minister visited Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ) on Saturday to try to lift his troops.
He handed out a fluffy kangaroo and koala to staff who had done well. Then he said: “I know we’ve gone early but thanks to everyone here we were ready and have got the jump on Labour. We all know campaigns are tough, relentless hours, not much sleep and lots of pressure. But we have to put our all into it.
“Labour are sitting there thinking they can waltz into Downing Street without saying what they want to do with the great privilege and power of being in office. They think they can take the British people for granted, and it’s our job not to let that happen.
“Now let’s take the fight to Labour.”
The first pep talk took place at 3.30pm on Wednesday, when Sunak called in eight senior ministers to tell them he was planning to call the general election four months earlier than most had expected. Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, had been in the discussions from the beginning and Sunak told Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the foreign secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, on Tuesday evening.
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Also in attendance on Wednesday were James Cleverly, the home secretary, Michael Gove, the housing secretary, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, Simon Hart, the chief whip, and Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary.
Some of those summoned, knowing an election was on the cards, were delighted the prime minister had finally decided to consult senior elected politicians, many of whom think their political touch is defter than Sunak’s. Here was the “kitchen cabinet” off which to bounce ideas they had long suggested he set up.
Then Sunak said: “I have been to see the King. This is my decision. I’ll explain it to you and then, when we go next door, I’ll call on you to speak and I want you to back me.”
Far from a consultation exercise, this was a private rubber-stamping of a decision already made. Sunak explained that he wanted to “turn the spotlight on [Sir Keir] Starmer” and that only by calling an election could the Tories force the public to listen to their arguments or face “the choice” between two prime ministers.
In his address to CCHQ staff on Saturday, Sunak explained this approach: “In just under six weeks’ time the country will go to the polls, and it’s our job to make very clear what the choice is when they do. Our party, that has a strong record and a plan for a secure future, or the Labour Party, who have no plan, nothing more than a word on a placard” — a reference to “Change” emblazoned on Labour election materials.
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In the pre-meeting on Wednesday, Cameron mused that having been prime minister under the Fixed-terms Parliament Act, “I never had to make this decision”. He called it “tough” for Sunak and went on: “It either works for you or it doesn’t. If you think Labour isn’t ready and you can create a divide amongst them, then you’ve got my full support.” Those watching thought this a less than full endorsement.
The foreign secretary repeated his comments in full cabinet but told a friend at the end of the week that it was a “bad idea”. The source said: “[Cameron] doesn’t think the country wants an election. Literally no one in the cabinet supports this, apart from Dowden.”
Shapps, in particular, was uncomfortable, telling Sunak in the pre-meeting that he would not have chosen that moment. Others say Badenoch, another potential leadership contender, “looked unhappy — a bit windy”, though she seems not to have vocalised this. In the main cabinet meeting that followed, Shapps was not called on to speak. Esther McVey and Chris Heaton-Harris both made clear they did not agree with the decision. Everyone else muttered supportive bromides.
Sunak’s aides portray his decision as that of a man seeking to grasp the controls of his own destiny, a diminutive and cautious technocrat tearing off his (sodden) shirt and revealing the rippling muscles of a political Hulk beneath. “He thinks fortune favours the brave,” one said. “He is really up for this.”
Those in the loop say Sunak began to lean towards a pre-summer election in April, when it became clear growth figures were going to show inflation falling and an economy returning to health. One migrant has been returned (voluntarily) to Rwanda. The Tories hope for an interest-rate cut on June 20 during the campaign and announced the news on the day inflation fell to 2.3 per cent. But, at heart, Sunak was not confident things would get any better. “Basically he doesn’t want to be dragged out like Gordon Brown and John Major were by clinging on until the last moment,” another ally said.
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• Labour and Lib Dems attack Tories’ record — as it happened
However, ministers who have watched Sunak’s short-tempered frustration that nothing he has done since last summer has seemed to work see a man who has had enough. A close aide told friends that Sunak had been hit hard by the Tories’ dire polling numbers and was “emotionally finding it hard to struggle with being unpopular”. Those monitoring things in the major polling companies say the Tory position has eroded further in the four days since Sunak’s election announcement.
In the wider parliamentary party there is cold fury that the prime minister seems prepared to sacrifice so many of them. There is also incredulity, if the decision to go was made a month ago, that the campaign launch was so shambolic, with Sunak pitched outside No 10 into a torrential downpour with no umbrella, while the anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray blasted the New Labour theme tune, D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better, into Downing Street.
In the cabinet room, one minister was overheard saying: “What is that? What are we watching?” But for Sunak’s team, the alternatives were worse. “If we’d brought it indoors everyone would have said he was running scared, and if he’d had an umbrella, people would have called him ‘the wally with the brolly’.” The prime minister himself insisted on heading out into the storm.
In Labour HQ there was hilarity. Morgan McSweeney, the party’s senior strategist, joked with colleagues: “I’ve been telling you for months that we have to be absolutely prepared and up to speed to take on the might of the Tory campaign machine. And then that happens.”
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While Labour wrote most of its manifesto in March, the Tory one is a work in progress and key aides, such as Will Tanner, the deputy chief of staff, are off seeking safe seats. They were still recruiting people to work on the manifesto last week, according to one insider.
While Isaac Levido, the Tory campaign chief, has built a 20-strong digital team, senior Tories had expected CCHQ to hire the New Zealand firm Topham Guerin, which created highly praised digital content five years ago. Other former CCHQ aides and special advisers who had expected to help out in the autumn have not yet returned, though it is expected some will do so in the days ahead.
MPs are furious that they have had little time to prepare for the end of their careers. “It’s all right for him,” one ex-minister said. “We all know he’s got a job lined up in California and he doesn’t need the money anyway. I wish he’d just resigned and let Penny [Mordaunt] have a go. I haven’t had a chance to get a job. Everyone is going to be stripped of their passes and kicked out of their offices by Wednesday. People are having to lay off their staff.”
All this dissent led to false rumours on Friday night that veterans such as Sir Lynton Crosby, Andy Coulson, Cameron’s communications director, and George Osborne, were set to return to revive the campaign. Crosby is in Australia, while a friend of Osborne said the suggestion was not only untrue but impossible: “George thinks Rishi is hopeless. He’s always thought he doesn’t have a big political brain and that Rishi has made two big calls in his career — backing Brexit and backing Boris — and that those are the two most catastrophic things to happen to this country in the last decade.”
Which leaves one big beast to account for. Johnson was also surprised by the election timing. He was expected to do some campaigning in “red wall” seats, where he has more pull than Sunak, but is due to be abroad for much of the next six weeks, drumming up support for Ukraine and on a long-booked family holiday.
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Sunak and Johnson spoke a month ago but the incumbent in No 10 has not explicitly asked for the former prime minister’s help. Instead, a back channel has been operating between Levido and Lord Kempsell, who handles Johnson’s communications. Johnson is likely to make some campaign visits closer to election day.
Levido, who directs the campaign from a pod in the middle of CCHQ, preferred an autumn poll but has been preparing for July with a series of positioning exercises, key among them Sunak committing his party to defence spending of 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, followed by a speech in which the prime minister argued that in a turbulent world, economic and national security is possible only with the Tories.
A new poll conducted by Charlesbye Strategy has found the public mood is far more closely aligned to Labour: 57 per cent of the population agreed with Sir Keir Starmer’s “Change” message and only 24 per cent agreed with Rishi Sunak’s “stick with the plan”. Sunak is also trying to convince voters that economic conditions are improving and they will eventually feel better-off. But the poll found that only 20 per cent felt personally better-off since the last election, while 50 per cent felt worse-off.
Lee Cain, founding partner at Charlesbye and Johnson’s former communications director, who commissioned the polling, said: “On all the key issues of this election — from cost of living to public services — the public feel that things are not working and we need a new direction. This is why change resonates more with voters than the status quo.”
The only findings that suggest the Tories might prevent a Labour landslide are those suggesting an “enthusiasm deficit” where Starmer is concerned. Of those intending to vote Labour, 51 per cent say they agree most with the statement: “I will be voting to get rid of a Conservative government.” Only 28 per cent say they will vote for Labour because they have “the best vision for the country”.
This accords with a focus group conducted among 2019 Conservative voters in Aldershot and Portsmouth after the election was called. Luke Tryl of More in Common, who ran the group, said: “The general mood was that time was up for the Conservatives, but they knew almost nothing about Starmer, yet were backing him because of the time-for-change mood.”
Levido’s plan for elections is to treat them like a court case, with an opening argument, then a period in the middle he calls “the evidentiary phase”, offering more detail on the main themes and attacking Starmer over the key planks of his offer, followed by a closing argument.
The Tory election “grid” features plans to release a series of big-hitting policies over the next week to capture attention, rather than wait for a manifesto launch. That is not likely to be for another three weeks. The first plan — the return of National Service — was unveiled this weekend. If he doesn’t win, perhaps Sunak can don a sergeant-major’s uniform and give the young troops a pep talk.
