It’s time to be straight with the British public

Editorial: With a week to go before polling day, the parties’ attack lines have become wearyingly familiar – yet there is also a sense that we have not heard nearly enough about how they would tackle the rumoured disasters that may soon engulf the public finances

(Dave Brown)

Such seems likely to be the scale of the Tory election campaign’s failure that few will claim paternity of it. In what will inevitably be a fractious but inconclusive period of recrimination, various of those in Rishi Sunak’s inner circle will claim, with differing degrees of credibility, that they never believed that going “early” (in the sense of not continuing until the autumn, as had been expected) was wise, or that a long campaign was likely to turn around a 20 percentage-point Labour lead. No matter; the buck stops on Mr Sunak’s desk.

It is fair to say now, a week away from a new government, that the prime minister must take responsibility for what has gone wrong. It has been the worst election campaign fought by a governing party since 1945, and is on course to leave the Conservatives at their lowest ebb since the dawn of the democratic age and the passing of the Great Reform Act of 1832.

Mr Sunak cannot be blamed for everything that has gone wrong since 2010, but he was holding the baby when the music stopped. His place in history, unfortunately, looks assured.