Yeah, didnt make sense to me, either.
I think a sense of fair play: Rishi doesn’t see himself in the same mould as the breaker of rules and protocols Johnson, You’d normally expect an election in the Spring/Summer so that’s what Rishi delivered.
There was some good economic news in the last budget, maybe trying to mitigate the damage there.
If England, (not Scotland) had been doing much better in the football maybe there would have been more of a sense of optimism which would have mitigated further.
I think you’re being far too kind. He’s had enough, clearly.
I’ve heard two aspects:
- The election had to be called before the end of the year/early next, and the Tories were not expecting any better news that would improve their fortunes by then, so it would have been a worse loss at that time. (IIRC the election was “expected” in the fall, and it being in the summer was a “surprise”.)
- Sunak was facing a lot of internal party pressure, which was likely to result in him being ousted as prime minister if the party had another month to mull it over. Certainly having another round of musical chairs makes the entire party look buffoonish.
Possibly, like Jim Callaghan in 1979, he had had enough of being ‘buggered about’, and would rather it came on now rather than limp through the autumn with everyone waiting and not able to get anything much done. We may have to wait for his book to find out.
Fair play? Come on. He was probably always going to lose, but calculated that going now was the best chance. Factors: fractious Tory MPs seeking to oust him seem to have backed off for the time being; relatively favourable PR on the Small Boats/Rwanda issue which he has for some reason staked his premiership on, but which headlines will likely worsen on in coming months; catching Labour and Reform unprepared (sort of worked with Reform); falling inflation and signs of improving economy (but why not wait, then?)
Not disputing your thoughts, but building on them.
AKA “the Honourable Member for the 18th century.”
Here’s how the Starmer Cabinet is shaping up:
Then why has he made so many mistakes? Same reason? Resignation?
As far as immigration being a top issue in the UK, it is also huge here in the former colony. The one thing I keep coming back to though is that were it not for immigration our population would be falling. Americans are having fewer and fewer children.
Also the workforce would be VERY small. The US needs immigration in order to meet employment demands, it is as simple as that.
Yeah, same thing here - immigrants were prepared to do the jobs nobody else would touch, and were prepared to do it quite cheaply - there are problems with that in itself, because it meant employers were able to keep wages unreasonably low, but after Brexit when a lot of immigrant workers went back to their own countries, there was a labour shortage in agriculture (COVID compounded this issue, of course).
IMO, Britain has been at its greatest when it was most connected to the rest of the world; in the more distant past, and unacceptably of course, through imperialism, but after that, the times when we opened up to the world were the times when we grew and were strongest. Immigrants bring fresh perspectives, interesting culture, delicious foods, and above all else, are usually here because they want to be here rather than just being here by accident of birth.
Thanks to those who replied to my question about why Sunak chose to call the general election. To be honest, some aspects of the parliamentary system are foreign to some Americans like me.
On a side note, the Labour win has brought out the batshit right on X, with a disturbing number insisting that this means the imminent implementation of socialism and sharia law and fascism and so forth, all apparently simultaneously. I took some slightly queasy amusement in reading an argument between two such people, one insisting that the Muslims were taking over the country and the other insisting that the Jews already had.
None of which bears any relation to what the actual Labour Party represent, which is a rather banal middle class mediocrity.
Now that’s some good shit right there. 
Warms my heart it does.
My favorite theory is that he called it early enough that he still had time to enroll his children in California private school for the fall semester.
are they even remotely relevant anymore outside of NI?
Interesting that in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s farewell speech he quoted “from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success” which sounds like it might be Shakespeare or Wordsworth or someone similarly significant, but it was in fact a song from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
They are the largest single party in the power-sharing government of NI and a significant party in the Republic, but of course they have no wish to be relevant to the UK Parliament. They don’t take their seats in the Commons, but do do the constituency work and take the salary accordingly.
A follow-up question: why did Rishi choose July 4th of all days? Lack of choice?
It was probably random, though apparently Election Day is always a Thursday in the UK.