Two thirds of British people think he is a bad Prime Minister, a proportion which has more than doubled since he came to power at the end of October 2022, according to the YouGov polling institute. Less than three weeks before the legislative elections on July 4, the accounts are not good for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Entering Downing Street with the mission of bringing economic stability to the United Kingdom, he today seems weighed down by the wear and tear of the Conservatives in power for fourteen years.
The economy is doing better
If, since his arrival, the economy has shown slight growth and inflation has largely fallen, Rishi Sunak struggles to get credit for it, even within his party, more divided than ever and on which he does not never really made its mark.
Even his stubbornness in trying to bring to fruition the Conservative project to expel migrants to Rwanda, which Labor promised to abandon if they came to power, was not enough to satisfy the right wing of the Tories.
Chain of errors
And since he called the elections, his campaign has turned into an ordeal: bad polls, entry into the race of anti-immigration candidate Nigel Farage and repeated blunders. Much criticized, his shortened stay in France for the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings forced him to acknowledge an “error” and apologize.
Are these missteps due to his relative inexperience in politics? Rishi Sunak only entered the scene in 2015, at the age of 44, leaving the world of finance to be elected as an MP in Yorkshire.
After his election, the rise of this Brexit supporter was meteoric. At the start of 2020, he was propelled to the prestigious position of Minister of Finance. Before contributing to the departure of Boris Johnson in 2022, by resigning from the government after yet another scandal involving the former Prime Minister.
Will its fall be so rapid? No incumbent Prime Minister has ever lost their seat in a general election in the United Kingdom. And Rishi Sunak is running in a constituency deemed safe for his side. His future among the conservatives will also be judged by the number of parliamentarians that the party will retain. Rishi Sunak promised to fight “until the last day” despite the announced debacle.