Sunak isn’t the first PM to gamble on an election. Here are five more ...
RISHI Sunak is taking a gamble with his political career after calling a snap General Election. With the Conservatives well behind in the polls, he seems to believe things are as good as they’re going to get for his premiership, and is gambling on the six-week campaign allowing him to narrow the gap. Here are some of the other big political gambles – some of which paid off and some of which resolutely did not.
Theresa May, 2017
Operating with a small majority of 17, Ms May struggled to make any headway with Brexit due to internal divisions in her party. She aimed to rectify that by calling a General Election, with polls showing the Tories had a 21-point lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
Instead, Ms May lost 13 seats as Labour recorded its biggest vote share since 2001 and left her reliant on the DUP to get anything passed in the house. After two years of varying degrees of deadlock, she was forced to stand down.
David Cameron, 2015
A gamble which paid off in the short term but not in the long run was Mr Cameron pledging a referendum on EU membership in the Conservative manifesto for the 2015 election. The Tory leader hoped to see off the threat of Ukip by delivering a vote on Brexit and it worked, his party gaining 24 seats and achieving the majority they couldn’t five years previously.
It proved a poisoned chalice, however, with Mr Cameron campaigning for remain and immediately resigning when the vote was lost.
Gordon Brown, 2010
Mr Brown was initially very popular when he took over from Tony Blair, with speculation in 2007 that he’d call a snap election and polls predicting he’d win.
He opted not to, and with a global recession hitting the following year, the conditions were never as favourable again. When the election eventually took place in 2010, it resulted in a hung parliament but the Conservatives emerged as the largest party and haven’t been out of government since.
SNP, 1979
Amid a period of political unrest, Tory leader Margaret Thatcher tabled a motion of no confidence in the Labour government (led by James Callaghan). The SNP opted to vote in favour (two of their 11 MPS abstained) after the failure of the first devolution referendum. The government fell by just one vote.
Mr Callaghan has said since that his government would have fallen eventually anyway but at the subsequent election, Thatcher won a majority and the SNP lost all but two of their MPS. The Scotland Act was repealed and devolution wouldn’t happen until 1997, and it wouldn’t be until 2015 that the SNP returned double figures to Westminster.
Harold Wilson, 1974
The second election to be held in that year after Wilson failed to win a majority in February. The Labour leader went to the country again in October, winning a majority of three seats.