All election campaigns boil down to either “safety first” or “time for a change”. So if he isn’t meeting his five pledges, Sunak must give voters a reason to fear taking a chance on Labour.
Immigration is currently the third most important issue for all voters and the second most important for the people who voted Tory in 2019 – the people Rishi Sunak must win back if he is to have any chance of retaining power.
His measured communications approach is superior to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s tendency towards needless provocation without any commitment to structural reform. But that reform must happen, regardless of how unpopular it may be.
He must level with voters about the poor prospects of the public finances – and the need for both a return to austerity and serious decisions around generating growth.
According to the columnist and presenter, “voters just won’t turn out, and that’s going to be the biggest problem.”
The Prime Minister has sunk in the esteem of Tory MPs, ConHome readers and the press because he hides away too much in Downing Street.
A by-election in the predecessor seat to Tamowrth in 1996 saw a Tory majority of 12.5 per cent become a 31.6 per cent Labour one.
Dowden and Rayner traded flouts and jeers, and nobody supposed this was a day when any serious work would be done.
This is the essence of the Prime Minister’s message to the nation. He is speaking the truth, even if the country is unlikely to be grateful to hear it.
Nor does the PM show any sign of knowing how to keep his followers’ spirits up during the conquest of inflation.
The Prime Minister says housing starts are double the number they were under Labour.
Even were this not the case, such ratings only weakly correlate to general election outcomes. There is no getting around the hard work of repairing the Party’s standing with voters.
The Prime Minister tells Kuenssberg that interest rates need to be raised in order to bring down inflation despite the financial difficulties some people might face as a result.
“You can pick some selective statistics, but overall, the experience that people are having on [NHS] waiting lists is dreadful” says the presenter.