Plenty of people will tell you this election is a done deal.
That Rishi Sunak and the Tories are languishing 25 points behind Labour. And that a staggering three-quarters of Brits now say it’s time for a change in Westminster.
It’s not looking good for the Conservatives.
But my polling suggests there is a way through for Sunak – the faintest glimmer of hope – provided the Tories look back to 2019 and the landslide they won with Boris Johnson. And learn the lessons.
First, a bit of background: however well they’re doing in the polls, the Labour Party needs a monumental 12-point swing in its favour on July 14, bigger than it has ever achieved in its entire history of elections. And that is to achieve a majority of just one.
So, even a modest improvement in Conservative fortunes could have a dramatic effect on the outcome.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the shock general election announcement in the pouring rain outside No.10 yesterday
In response, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer issued a statement where he promised his party would ‘return Britain to the service of working people’
I’m told Conservative strategists are convinced that Labour’s actual lead is smaller than the polls suggest.
The Tories will also, correctly, expect Labour’s lead to narrow in the six weeks before polling day.
But that’s still not enough to prevent a Starmer victory in my view.
And that’s why I believe Sunak’s advisers should turn their eyes northwards, to the voters in the former Labour constituencies of the Red Wall – Sedgefield in County Durham, for example – who made the dramatic switch to Boris and the Conservatives five years ago.
These are the people who gave the Tories a thumping victory in 2019 – and Sunak needs them again now.
If even half of them vote Conservative, he can deprive Labour of a majority in the House of Commons – which in the current circumstances would be a major achievement.
Yet, not even half of the ‘2019ers’ who switched to Boris five years ago say they are planning to vote Conservative this time round. The astonishing coalition of working and middle-class voters that Johnson put together has imploded.
Where have they gone?
Around one-fifth have moved leftwards, jumping ship to Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens.
Reform UK leader Richard Tice launches his party’s campaign in Westminster – following the news that honorary president Nigel Farage would not run in the election
About the same share have moved rightwards, defecting to Richard Tice’s Reform party – even in the absence of Nigel Farage, who’s now ruled himself out from standing in the general election.
But a much larger number of Boris Johnson voters – more than one in four – have given up on politics altogether. They say they don’t know who they’ll vote for – or refuse to answer pollsters’ questions at all. They’re completely fed-up.
If this enormous reservoir of apathy is troubling for our democracy, it also presents a narrow opportunity for Sunak.
If, over the next six weeks, he can zoom in on this specific group of voters and, somehow, find a way of winning them back then he could seriously reduce the gap between his party and Labour – and even stop Starmer from ruling in his own right.
And what do these voters care about?
Well, I’ve been polling them in recent weeks and I can tell you that, like everyone else, they’re troubled by the cost of living, they want to see a GP when they need one and they want NHS waiting lists to fall.
But they also tell me they want one thing above all else: they want to stop the boats. They want to regain control of Britain’s broken borders.
They want the crisis of illegal migration to stop making a complete mockery of our claim to be a self-governing, sovereign nation that is fully in control of its own laws and land.
Rishi Sunak visits staff at a distribution centre in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, as his election campaign went into motion
And, whatever you might think of Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party’s legacy over these past 14 years, the fact remains that they do have serious plan to disrupt and deter the boats.
And in that they are completely alone.
Rishi Sunak’s Illegal Migration Act, together with the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan, is our best chance of addressing a crisis that has continued to mount – as evidenced in the number of illegal migrants concerned about being sent to the African country – or who, fearing deportation, are moving to Ireland instead.
Remember, too, that more than a dozen other European nations that are now exploring similar plans to to ours.
Labour, meanwhile, are clueless. They simply don’t have a serious plan for dealing with this crisis.
I’ve yet to meet a single person in the National Crime Agency or the secret security services who think Starmer’s vague talk about ‘smashing the gangs’ will work.
It’s just a game of Whac-A-Mole – once you smash one gang another will appear to take its place.
Sir Keir addresses Labour supporters at Priestfield football ground in Gillingham, Kent
Joined by deputy leader Angela Rayner, the pair started their campaign trail in the South East
Even worse, by repealing the Illegal Migration Act, getting rid of the Rwanda plan – which Keir Starmer has said he’ll do – and by allowing the more than 100,000 illegal migrants who are already in Britain to stay in Britain, Labour will only encourage even more to come.
You might as well put a huge, flashing neon sign on the White Cliffs of Dover: Britain’s open – come on in!
This is why, were I advising him, I’d be telling Mr Sunak to spend the next six weeks talking to these voters about this one issue – his plan for stopping the boats.
And doing it over and over again.
He should talk, too, of course, about Labour’s plan to push us closer to the EU. About its plan to introduce the sort of disastrous woke policies that caused so much chaos in Scotland.
And about the dismal judgment that led Keir Starmer to campaign for a second referendum on Brexit – to tell us all to make Jeremy Corbyn our Prime Minister.
But most of all he must make this election a referendum on immigration and the borders.
Who do you trust to protect Britain and the British people – Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer?
I’m not saying this is Sunak’s big chance – it’s his only chance.
It’s the only way he can win back a big chunk of his party’s disgruntled 2019’ers and narrow Labour’s lead.
He should seize it with both hands.
Matt Goodwin is professor of politics at the University of Kent and author of Values, Voice And Virtue: The New British Politics. You can read more of his analysis here @GoodwinMJ.
