Could Rishi Sunak be gearing up for a spring election?

He may be thinking it’s possible to sneak a victory when you aren’t too far behind in the polls. But does he really want to risk sacrificing the time he has left in office? Andrew Grice weighs up the pros and cons…

Sunak might prove less keen on a spring election than some of his advisers (Getty)

Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement left some ministers convinced that Rishi Sunak plans to call the general election in May next year. “It’s gone from possible to definite in my mind,” one told me.

The clincher for them is that the cut in national insurance contributions will take effect in January rather than at the start of the tax year in April. Another signal could be holding a tax-cutting Budget in February rather than March.

Some Sunak advisers have long favoured a spring election. They have told him that when John Major hung on until the last moment in 1997, it compounded the Tories’ defeat. “For every week we delayed, we lost another crop of seats,” one MP claimed. “You don’t want to be clinging on by your fingertips when the country wants an election.” A contest on the same day as local authority elections on 2 May would avoid damaging headlines about Tory losses and a sense that a general election defeat was inevitable.

I don’t think Sunak has decided to have a spring election; rather, he has sensibly decided to keep the option open. That doesn’t mean it will happen. History tells us that prime ministers don’t call elections earlier than they need to when they are behind in the opinion polls. Of the 20 general elections since 1950, 14 were held when the governing party was ahead; five when it was behind, usually when its five-year term was running out, and one when the two main parties were level. This graph from the Resolution Foundation think tank summarises it neatly. At the webinar where the graph was unveiled, 72 per cent of those present (including me) thought the autumn statement had made a spring election more likely.

One crumb of comfort for Sunak: it is possible to win from being narrowly behind. The Tories did it in 1992 under Major and in 2015 under David Cameron.

The state of the economy is always a key factor in the timing. Next year another issue will also be important: immigration. Its potency was shown when it blew Sunak’s strategy off course after last week’s Supreme Court defeat on the Rwanda scheme, and again after Thursday’s net migration figures.

If Sunak thinks he will fail to honour his pledge that flights will take asylum seekers to Rwanda by the spring, he might be tempted to call an early election to avoid a humiliating setback – and a summer of small boat crossings. Some Tory MPs want a “people versus establishment” election if new laws on Rwanda are blocked by the House of Lords or the courts, as Boris Johnson did in 2019 over Brexit.

Sunak might just be tempted if, as is likely, the flawed Rwanda policy is still stuck on the runway. While Labour can man-mark the Tories on the economy and tax, there’s a genuine dividing line between the parties on immigration. Labour would (rightly) scrap the Rwanda plan, but the public want to stop the boats, so the issue is potentially Starmer’s weak spot.

However, an “immigration election” would not be without risks for Sunak. It would advertise the government’s failure to cut legal and illegal migration. It wouldn’t be easy for Sunak to look “tough” with Suella Braverman, who is already fighting the post-election election, accusing him of being “soft” at every turn. And regardless of whether the Tories want an “immigration election”, voters may decide otherwise. The cost of living crisis and NHS are currently a much greater priority for them.

Labour has been gearing up for a May 2024 election for several months. “The Tories will go then if they can,” one Starmer ally told me. Of course, in public Labour says: “Bring it on.” Privately, senior Labour figures would probably prefer an autumn contest. The Tories visibly running out of time would help Starmer’s “time for change” pitch. An autumn election would give Labour more time to set out its stall. “We are better at playing straight bat to the Tories than advancing our own economic case,” one Labour insider admitted.

Ultimately, the election date will depend on the opinion polls. If the Tories can halve Labour’s 20-point lead early next year, a spring contest will be more likely. Momentum matters.

But, but, but... Sunak might prove less keen on a spring election than some of his advisers. Being PM is a very difficult job to give up. PMs are acutely aware of their legacy. Sunak has made a landmark change on the legal age for smoking and will have other ideas in mind.

The critical question for Sunak will be: do I want to give up what could be a quarter of my two years in Number 10? This legacy factor and the 20-point poll gap make an autumn 2024 contest more likely than a spring one.