The general election must be held before 28th January 2025 and it’s now beginning to look like Sunak and the Tories will hang on until the very last day. While some past PMs have shown a marked reluctance to leave office, no previous  Prime Minister, other than Johnson, has ever demonstrated this extreme level of ‘cat in a travel basket at the vets’  of clinging to office Sunak is currently displaying.



Normally in the last knockings of an outgoing government  the media and the establishment would be trying their best to give them a push out of the door. Getting  the new mob in to clean up the mess the old ones have made but that is not so now. Even the media seem to  dread the prospect of a general election where two parties and their leaders, neither of whom have  the remotest idea of what is needed to even ameliorate the problems British capitalism is immersed in, never mind cure them,square off against each other. While it is obvious why  the Tories are reluctant to be separated from the lucrative levers of power it is less clear to the public why the Parliamentary Labour Party should  fear taking power. It is because they have no idea how to clear up the mess the Tory government has made over the last 14 years and they fear the huge millstone of expectation to do so  that will be thrust upon them.



All the polls show Labour leading handsomely with 47% Tory 20% LibDems 9% Greens 8% Reform 8% Others 7% (IPOSS 28/2/24) just an example. Recent polls, by Survation and Yougov have put the expected Labour majorities at 286 and 156 respectively.  So surely we can  expect  a landslide win for Labour at the next election, anything short of that or  a large Labour majority after the next election will be what football pundits refer to as a “disappointment”after a player has blatantly missed an open goal. After all, Labour secured a 88 seat majority after gaining 146 seats  on a similar polling of 43% to the Tory 31% in the general election of 1997.




How accurate are these polls ? Before the 2015 election, which the Tories won by 6.5%  the polls were wildly wrong, giving Labour a small lead right up until the last days of the campaign. When they were later called to account for this discrepancy they gave the disingenuous explanation that they had recorded too many potential Labour voters and too few Tories ! In the current polls we should expect a small discrepancy but a 130 seat difference is hardly a small margin of error. In the words of Homer J Simpson “Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.” Labour’s current lead is accidental and fragile, gained as a result of the Truss fiasco and sustained since on the basis of Labour not being Tories rather than any positive support of Labour’s policies, one scandal or media disaster on Labour’s part could see that lead  vanish.


UK governments have changed from Labour to Tory or vice versa three times in the last 50 years and each time a mildly popular leader of the opposition took over from a deeply unpopular Prime Minister, Brown -26% versus Cameron +3% in 2010 for example.. The average difference in approval/disapproval rating in these contests were in the low 30 percentages. This time we still have a 30 point difference but the difference is that we  have an unpopular leader of the opposition (-18%) facing off against a deeply unpopular Prime Minister (-48%).





We can not realistically ascribe Labour’s polling  to the popularity of the  leading figures of the party or their  presence,  charm or charisma. In fact most members of the public would be hard pressed to even put a name to any of the so-called leading lights of the party. Even in the age of social media no Labour figure’s remarks have  gone  viral in the way the jibe “Honey I shrunk the economy”or the mantra “Education,education,education” did. It could be argued, as it is among the self defined “left” on social media, that these leading Labour figures are deeply unpopular but there is little actual evidence to show that the bulk of the public currently care too much one way or another about them but there is every sign that  in a future government  to know them will be to loathe them.





Sunak and Starmer , two of the most stupefyingly dull politicians Britain has ever produced, will share centre stage at the coming general election.In describing this pair most  writers suffer from a block, staring at a completely  blank screen trying to find the words to describe two completely  blank personalities.There will be plenty of choice to of policies and politicians to vote against at the next election but precious few reasons to vote for any of them. In a real sense it will not be a case of who wins the next election more a case of who loses by the most.





Why is this so, why do the leaders of both the main political parties  lack any   drive and  imagination or what we might call personality? Well it is because they both accurately represent the current state of British capitalism being utterly out of ideas or solutions to the crisis of capitalism. Cometh the hour cometh the men, in our instance, two bland men with almost identical neo liberal policies and without a Scoobie do between them, Tweedle Dull and Tweedle Duller. 


In ordinary times Sunak and Starmer would at best have been little known backbenchers but the precarious situation British capitalism finds itself in has caused both of them to be promoted far beyond their pay grade or ability.This promotion is not even as justified as the recent promotion of  yoghurt to a main ingredient in the meal deal, yoghurt is at best  a side and  will never replace sausage rolls or cheese baps as a main, just as Sunak and Starmer will never be real leaders .This pairing suit what is currently needed by the capitalists to maintain their profit margins. Vacuous charisma free politicians who can’t or won’t think outside the box, politicians for whom  nothing must be changed or even questioned no matter how glaring the need or how obvious the benefits would be, if it threatens fragile profit generation. Under either of their leadership the lame ducks of British capitalism will continue to be carried by taxpayer subsidies whilst the poor will be  thrown to the wolves.


Owen Jones, the popular left wing columnist recently started a campaign called “We deserve better” while we do agree we also have to say that deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it. We have the misfortune to be  viewing a third rate double act with two straight men and no laughs  going through their tired old neo liberalist routine  during an intermission in the class struggle. The main headline act, the working class is waiting in the wings and it is only the working class that can solve the crisis of capitalism with socialist policies.

The Struggle 14/04/24