First scene. A plane with its engines on fire loses altitude uncontrollably, the foot of a snowy mountain approaches ominously on the horizon, the oxygen masks fly off, a wing detaches from the fuselage, two flight attendants are thrown into the void, the passengers They scream desperately... “This is Captain Rishi Sunak,” you hear over the public address system. We are going through an area of turbulence but please remain calm. “I have a strategy for landing and everything is under control.”
Second scene of the play, at the same time, on the other side of the stage. The visiting team is leading 0-4 at half-time, but coach Keir Starmer addresses the players with a worried face: “We are in the game, guys, but that's all, there's no need to get overconfident, there's nothing won.” "I'm sure the opponent will react and score goals."
That is the scenario in the play of British politics a few months (probably eight or nine) before the general election. On the government side, after fourteen consecutive years in office with five prime ministers, the debate is whether the Conservatives will take a beating or be annihilated, like their Canadian colleagues in 1993. Sunak's hope for a comeback appears increasingly remote. , and it's like a hiker in the middle of a muddy field with mud up to his eyebrows.
Journalists have coined the term rishession (a combination of Rishi and recession) to refer to the torpor of the British economy with two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Of his promises to voters, he has only fulfilled that of reducing inflation by half, although it is not noticeable in the shopping basket. Otherwise, all failures. Queues in public health have increased instead of decreased, the same with immigration, and public debt remains at a very high level that scares the markets.
After losing two more seats this week in by-elections, the shouts have gone up a few more decibels on the Tory plane. Not only because the party is twenty points behind Labor in schools, with no prospects of catching up, but because part of its voters (the most socially conservative, Brexit-supporting and anti-immigration) are going to Reform, the far-right group whose honorary president is Nigel Farage, which already exceeds 10% support. An electoral cocktail more lethal than Aunt Roberta (vodka, brandy, absinthe, gin and raspberry liqueur, pure alcohol without any juice, water or soft drink to soften it).
Faced with the prospect of a disaster, the Tories are increasingly divided, with small groups such as the natcons (nationalist conservatives), popcons (popular conservatives) and newcons (new conservatives), all of which demand that Sunak shift to the right to put things in the middle with Labour: drastic reduction of taxes, subsidies, the welfare state, immigration, money to combat climate change, radicalization of Brexit, abandoning the European Convention on Human Rights and making flights take off with refugees to Rwanda... The idea is to “unite the right” and completely abandon the political center. Some want to get rid of Sunak and get Boris Johnson back (who allows himself to be begged), others a populist Johnson-Farage ticket. What despair does...
But if between one thing and another Sunak has experienced a dark week, Labor's week has left the sweet aftertaste of the two seats won, but before there was a lot of bitter taste in the mouth. The return of criticism of structural anti-Semitism that has not ended the marginalization of Jeremy Corbyn has been combined with the abandonment of the 35 billion euro investment plan in green energy to partially destabilize Keir Starmer, although in his case the plane did not It is on its way to crashing but rather landing after bouncing a couple of times.
The Conservatives are divided, but so is Labour, between those who think, on the one hand, that all expensive or controversial projects must be eliminated from the program so as not to give ammunition to the Tories, and those who believe, on the other, that victory is in the pocket and we would have to be a little radical (nationalization of public services, tax increases on the richest, abolition of university tuition, increase in social subsidies...) in order to come to power with a clear mandate for change . The influence of Tony Blair, who belongs to the first group, is increasing. When he won in '97 he said that “the United Kingdom is an eminently conservative country,” and Labor, even if it wins, is always on provisional liberty.
