Well, alrighty then—Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak—having at least lasted in office longer than the life span of a head of lettuce left on the kitchen counter—has set a date for the next General Election. Unironically, apparently, it’s going to be on 4 July.
Because nothing disastrous ever happened to the United
Kingdom on that date, historically speaking.
In the main, I really admire the British tradition of a very limited campaign period for big elections. (A General Election is national, and it determines which party will control Parliament; thus it also determines, más o menos, who gets to move into No. 10 Downing Street.) By contrast, American presidential elections now seem to be continuous—the day after he was inaugurated in 2017, Cadet Bonespurs filed for candidacy in the 2020 election, using the next nearly four years to violate the Hatch Act in every conceivable way. This time around, Republican candidates came and went before we even got to the election year, and we still have nearly six months to go.
Which doesn’t even count the post-election whining, legal
challenges and violent insurrections they have planned.
It's rather odd that Sunak has stuck a pin in this date; the only requirement was that the election be held no later than January 2025, and you'd have thought that (being 21 points behind in the polls) he'd have wanted to wait until the last minute to pull the trigger.
It’s possible, of course, that he just wants to put an end to his misery and turn the detritus of the political operation over to Labour to let them try to clean up the mess left by 14 years of Tory control. Then he can hare off to the Silicon Valley and resume his hedge fund activities. (At least: somewhere as far from Rwanda as he can get.)
Here he is, making the announcement. As a metaphor for Tory rule, it's hard to do better than this.
©2024 Bas Bleu
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