Sunak calls summer General Election

THE UK goes to the polls on Thursday, July 4.

The Prime Minister announced the general election date in a sodden Downing Street at 5pm on Wednesday, May 22.

As the rain fell and “Things Can Only Get Better” blared over a nearby sound system, Mr Sunak set out his party’s key attack lines.

The Prime Minister attacked Labour for lacking a plan and Sir Kier Starmer for lacking principles.

Mr Sunak urged citizens to stay the course and trust his government to deliver stability and improvements.

The Prime Minister offered nothing new or inspirational, missing the chance to set a positive mood for the General Election campaign.

If one could detect a theme in the PM’s delivery, it appeared to be: “Things are going pretty badly; don’t let Labour ruin it”.

The weather matched the mood of the PM’s speech: wet. When Mr Sunak finished his speech and walked back into Number Ten, he was drenched.

Talking heads, the usual suspects, and the commentariat are already in overdrive.

Look! See! Scandal! Shock!

While the UK parties get ready for battle across key marginal seats and try grabbing headlines and favourable coverage, it’ll be easy to forget the importance of local issues in a General

Election campaign.

There are three seats in South West Wales, all redrawn or renamed.

The key battlegrounds for Herald readers are Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Preseli Pembrokeshire, and Mid & South Pembrokeshire.

At the last UK General Election in 2019, Pembrokeshire’s working-class voters abandoned Labour. Our County returned two Conservative MPs. In 2021, our County returned two Conservative MSs. At the Council elections a year later, the Conservative vote held up even as it went into shrank drastically elsewhere.

It would not be surprising if Labour’s performance in West Wales were worse than in the rest of the country.

As at previous elections, Labour candidates in West Wales must overcome the Welsh Government’s reeking and widespread unpopularity.

Twenty-five years of devolution has delivered nebulous benefits for the Welsh people.

A quarter of a century of “the Welsh difference” has made little or no difference to Wales’s people.

Banging on about crises in education, transport, public services, housing, and the NHS could be fruitful in England. It would be astonishing if it weren’t. However, Labour is hamstrung by being responsible for those policy areas and their appalling condition in Wales.

Labour in Wales can’t rely on claiming things are much worse over the Severn Bridge any more than the Welsh Conservatives can claim they’re much better.

Unable to campaign on its record in the Welsh Government, Labour will have to fight on a broader battleground:

The cost-of-living crisis.

The feeling that fourteen years of a Conservative government in Westminster have not improved Welsh voters’ lives.

Pressing the case that the time has come for change.

As for Wales’s other political parties, the Liberal Democrats are nowhere, the Greens will take any protest votes on the left from those who confuse activism and virtue-signalling with politics, and Reform will take any protest votes on the right from those who think “Two World Wars and One World Cup” is a programme for government.

Plaid Cymru faces different problems, not least because it comprises several factions that loathe each other more than they dislike other parties.

A good night for Plaid Cymru would be three seats won. A great night would be four seats won. There are, however, thirty-two Welsh constituencies. Do the maths.

Plaid Cymru—like the SNP or DUP—could have considerable leverage in a hung parliament or a parliament where the governing party has a small majority. The problem is Plaid chaining itself to the Labour Government in Wales. “Vote Plaid, Get Labour” could switch off voters Plaid must win over, whether or not Leanne Wood wants them.

Plaid would be functionally irrelevant in a parliament with a large Labour majority. They would have no more say than an independent MP or the departing Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas.

In addition, fewer seats in Wales (down to 32 from 40) will almost certainly mean fewer Plaid MPs. The tiny seats in North West Wales that Plaid usually won are gone, merged with other constituencies. Ceredigion has merged with Preseli Pembrokeshire. Carmarthenshire’s new seat boundaries exclude some strong Plaid-voting areas, and the local party is divided.

Despite New Labour’s anthem, “Things Can Only Get Better,” being played over Rishi Sunak’s speech on Wednesday, Sir Kier Starmer has not tapped into the public mood like Tony Blair did.

So far, Labour’s messaging offers only vague hope of undefined improvements.

Anyone for “Stuck in the Middle with You”?

It might be enough.