LONDON: Frustrated at his inability to get a clear message across to British voters, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called an election on Wednesday (May 22) from a position of weakness.
Sunak, 44, heads into the election far behind the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls and increasingly dependent on a small team of advisers to steer him through what is set to be an ugly campaign.
He is struggling to assert control over his governing Conservative Party, with some lawmakers already discussing who will replace him after what many see as an inevitable election defeat.
Some party members say his tenure as prime minister has been marked by missed opportunities. Others that he was the wrong man for the job, more technocrat than leader.
One Conservative insider said he had become increasingly distant. “His team often just leave him alone in his office, he likes to have his own time,” they said, on condition of anonymity. “His default is to tell people they’re just wrong – his advisers and MPs alike.”
It all seemed so different when the former investment banker and finance minister took office less than two years ago, inheriting an economy in crisis after financial markets balked at the under-funded tax and spending plans of his predecessor Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership.
As Britain’s fifth prime minister in eight years, Sunak was initially credited with restoring some stability with his focus on fiscal prudence, a less antagonistic attitude to the European Union and his success in restoring a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
