Sunak’s ‘Major’ Hopes and Fears

By David Ward

Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s hopes and fears are bound together in one previous Conservative leader, John Major. Sunak desperately wants to emulate Major the general election winner of 1992, rather than the loser by a landslide of 1997. That’s why the Tories are already trying to borrow from their successful 1992 campaign playbook. But in 2024 what chance is there that Sunak can follow the John Major of his hopes rather than his fears?

It’s not surprising that the Conservatives – trailing in the opinion polls and riven by internal division – are seeing similarities between 1992 and this year’s likely general election. For Sunak they raise the tantalising prospect that he can succeed, just as Major did, in plucking victory from the jaws of defeat. In early 1992 the UK economy was starting to show signs of recovery from a deep recession. Both interest rates and inflation were receding. He and his Chancellor Norman Lamont warned that voting for Labour risked killing off these ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery. Crucially Major, who had succeeded Margaret Thatcher in late 1990, pulled off the trick of looking like the leader of a new government even after 12 years of Tory rule. He scrapped the hated poll tax, successfully negotiated opts out from the Maastricht Treaty, and was able to present himself as a fresh start.

As a result, Labour’s poll lead at the end of Thatcher’s term of office dissipated and the election held on 9th April seemed too close to call. Many expected Neil Kinnock’s Labour to either win narrowly or be the largest party in a hung Parliament. Major’s outright victory with a working majority of 21 was a surprise. Against the trend of the polls the Tories won 42.8% of the vote, only a fraction down on their performance in 1987. It would be a dream come true for Sunak to repeat such an unexpected success. His nightmare is that he is doomed to be the John Major of 1997 when Labour’s Tony Blair took power after a landslide victory with a majority of 179 seats.

Again, there are comparisons to fuel Sunak’s fears. Labour’s victory in 1997 was all but inevitable following the dramatic failure of Conservative economic policy that occurred on ‘Black Wednesday’ September 16th, 1992. Humiliatingly for John Major the Pound was ejected from the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) despite the Bank of England spending billions in reserves and announcing a rise in interest rates to 15%. As a result, Tory economic credibility was shredded. Labour, then led by the late John Smith, branded Major “the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government”. Smith’s charge stuck and Labour soared to a huge lead in opinion polls that proved unassailable all the way to Blair’s landslide win in 1997.

It is hard to fathom how the Conservatives have managed to recreate another market crash at least as dramatic as Black Wednesday. But that is what the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss and the disastrous ‘mini budget’ of her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng achieved in September 2022. The financial markets – just as thirty years before lost faith in Major’s ability to maintain the Pound in the ERM – again had no confidence in Truss’ dash for growth based on unfunded tax cuts for the rich. With market confidence collapsing, the Bank of England had to step in to defend the Pound and the solvency of the pension system by sharply increasing interest rates causing mortgage misery for millions. Even though Truss and Kwarteng did not survive in office for long, neither has the Conservatives’ economic credibility and their poll ratings have again nosedived.

That is why Sunak, and his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are doing everything they can to erase from the public consciousness ‘Trussonomics’ and the mini-budget debacle. Just as Major buried Thatcher’s poll tax, Hunt cancelled Kwarteng’s abolition of the top tax rate and has deferred to the independent Bank of England’s touch choices on interest rates. Again, like in 1992 Sunak and Hunt are now trying to reframe the economic narrative ahead of the election. They are already claiming credit for the Bank of England’s actions to curb inflation and in the budget on March 6th will seek to divert attention from the Tory’s record burden of taxation (caused by the combination of low growth and raised income tax thresholds) by offering pre-election tax cuts. This will set the stage for a re-run of John Major’s 1992 campaign portraying Labour as a threat to recovery and a risk too far.

Will this cynical strategy work and history repeat itself? It looks unlikely. As the Times reported on February 2nd. Sunak now needs to overcome poll ratings significantly worse than John Major’s in 1992. It is true that Labour under Neil Kinnock had similar poll leads to those enjoyed today by Keir Starmer, but in the last ten months before the election the advantage over the Conservatives narrowed substantially. By the time of the April 1992 election the Tories were only 6.7% behind Labour. They also led Labour on ratings of economic competence and Major’s personal popularity was significantly higher than Kinnock’s. Neither is the case today. As the Times article noted to win the next election “Sunak will need to pull off the biggest political comeback in more than 70 years”.

Nevertheless, Labour also needs to achieve a record-breaking result in 2024. A new report by the Fabian Society provides a seat-by-seat analysis of the 125 seats Labour must win to return to power. For Keir Starmer the keys to Downing Street require the party to secure a uniform swing of 12.7% greater than the 10.2% achieved by Tony Blair in 1997. With many voters still identifying as ‘don’t knows’ the true size of Labour’s poll lead is still uncertain . It is also likely that the party’s year-long average poll lead of 18% will narrow in the run up to the General Election. The good news is that Labour does seem better placed to win than it was in 1992 but anticipating 1997 landslides is not just idle speculation but foolishly complacent. Which is why to prevent another five years Tory chaos and failure, Labour must fight for every vote and take nothing for granted. That is the surest way to realize Sunak’s worst ‘Major’ fear.