One of the most
misremembered political events of the past was the way in which Harold Wilson called
the 1966 election just after England won the World Cup and swept to victory on
the back of the feel-good factor which resulted from the win. It’s utter
nonsense, of course – the world cup final was on 30th July, 17 weeks
after the election on 31st March. Yet many people
still remember, albeit not always fondly, the football effect on Labour’s victory.
But if we really want to see the potential impact of a football game on an
election, we need to look at 1970,
when England were knocked out in the quarter finals just four days before the
election, and a generally expected Labour win became an unexpected Tory win.
Whether Sunak has calculated
the impact of the Euros
on his party’s chances is an unanswered question. The group stages finish a
week before the election and the first knock-out stage ends just two days
before polling day. Historically and statistically, it’s likely that England
will make it through the group stage, so he might be making a safe-ish bet up
to that point; but the possibility of an England defeat in a knockout round
just days before an election looms large. The more hyped the possibility of
winning, the bigger the likelihood of failure – another lesson from sporting
history. (He will almost certainly not even have considered the progress of
Scotland’s team in the same event; the election will, as is always the case, be
lost or won in England.) Following the inexplicable urge felt by senior male politicians (I’ve
never understood why they feel such an urge, but it does seem to be a very
gender-specific infection) to claim to support a football team, Sunak has opted
for being a Southampton supporter, although I’m sure that I’m not the only one
who’s a little dubious about the claim, and indeed about any claim he makes to be
interested in, or to follow, football.
Whether, or to what
extent, a football result really affects the outcome of a General Election is a
moot point; whilst it’s hard to believe that millions of people are just
waiting for the final whistle before deciding how to vote, it’s entirely
believable that a general feel-good factor will benefit incumbents – just as a
feel-bad factor will benefit the opposition. I did once read a book on politics
which described voting as an essentially irrational act: voting according to
the outcome of a football game seems to fit the description rather well. Sunak,
on the other hand, seems to genuinely believe that the electorate will carefully
weigh up the manifestos of the parties and use a spreadsheet to arrive at an assessment
of which is the most financially-rewarding for them personally, and then cast
their vote accordingly. Even if his belief in his own competence and ability to
deliver were justified (and it’s not a belief which stands up to much objective
analysis), the assumption that voters would then:
(a) conclude they will be better off
under the Tories, and
(b) vote entirely selfishly on the
basis of that cost-benefit analysis
underlines his
inexperience in practical politics, and the extent of his detachment from the
way people ‘feel’ about the way things are going in general. I’ve knocked on
tens of thousands of doors in my time, but it only took me a very small
proportion of that number to realise that voting behaviour is far more complex –
not to say inexplicable, or even inscrutable – than that.
Still, it gets him
off several rather vicious-looking hooks which have been dangling in front of
him. He’ll no longer have to find ways of sending someone, anyone, to Rwanda against
their will, just as one example. He'll delight the tobacco lobby by dropping his bill to ban smoking for anyone currently under 15. He can stop justifying the increase in NHS waiting lists, the levels of immigration, and the cost of living pressures on families - those all become someone else's problem. And on the fifth of July, he’ll be free to
announce that he’s standing down and going off to California to polish his
family fortune without waiting to be pushed out. In any spreadsheet setting out
the costs and benefits to Rishi Sunak personally of calling an election now,
the result looks a lot more favourable than many have been assuming. It just
doesn’t include anything remotely political.
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