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      Rishi Sunak’s Dismal Task: Leading U.K. Conservatives to Likely Defeat

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      After 14 years of Conservative government, Britain’s voters appear hungry for change. And Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems unable to persuade them otherwise.A few days before Britain’s Conservative Party suffered a stinging setback in local elections on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recorded a short video to promote some good news from his government. In the eight-second clip, Mr. Sunak poured milk from a pint bottle into a tall glass, filled with a steaming dark beverage and bearing the scribbled figure of 900 pounds on the side.“Pay day is coming,” Mr. Sunak posted, referring to the savings that an average wage earner would supposedly reap from a cut in mandatory contributions to Britain’s national insurance system.The mockery soon started. He’d added too much milk, some said. His numbers didn’t add up, said others. And why, asked one critic, would Mr. Sunak choose a pint bottle as a prop days after the opposition Labour Party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had skewered him in Parliament as a “pint-size loser?”However partisan her jab, loser is a label that Mr. Sunak is finding increasingly hard to shake, even among his members of his own party. In the 18 months since he replaced his failed predecessor, Liz Truss, Mr. Sunak, 43, has lost seven special parliamentary elections and back-to-back local elections.This past week’s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost about 40 percent of the 985 seats they were defending, were merely the latest signpost on what analysts say is a road to thumping defeat in a general election. National polls show the Labour Party leading the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points, a stubborn gap that the prime minister has been unable to close.The drumbeat of bad news is casting fresh scrutiny on Mr. Sunak’s leadership and the future of his party, which has been in power for 14 years but faces what could be a long stretch in the political wilderness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. to Cut Taxes Again as Election Nears

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      The Conservative government, trailing badly in the polls, proposed the second tax cut in four months.Amid lackluster prospects for economic growth, the British government announced it would cut taxes for workers ahead of a general election this year.Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s top financial official, told lawmakers on Wednesday that he would cut National Insurance, a payroll tax paid by workers and employers that funds state pensions and some benefits, by two percentage points. It would take the rate for about 27 million employees down to 8 percent, and follows a two percentage point cut announced less than four months ago. Together, the cuts would save the average employee about 900 pounds ($1,145) a year, Mr. Hunt said. The rate was also cut for self-employed workers.“We can now help families not just with temporary cost-of-living support but with permanent cuts in taxation,” Mr. Hunt, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said in Parliament. “We do this to give much needed help in challenging times. But also because Conservatives know lower tax means higher growth.”Mr. Hunt also announced a sweep of smaller measures, including freezing taxes on alcohol and fuel, proposals to increase productivity in the public sector, and abolishing the tax advantages for foreign earnings of British residents living abroad.The chancellor has been under political pressure from the governing Conservative Party to lower taxes ahead of the general election, which is expected to take place this year, though a date has not been set yet. The party is substantially lagging the opposition Labour Party in the polls.But Mr. Hunt’s ability to offer sweeteners to voters has been constrained by the fact that the British economy is growing slowly — if at all. Stretched public services need money and there are calls to invest more in infrastructure. The chancellor also has to meet his self-imposed budget rules, which gave him even less fiscal room to maneuver.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Conservatives Suffer Setback in Parliamentary Election in Britain

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      The results came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deals with a shrinking economy and discontent over a crisis gripping the country’s health system.Britain’s governing Conservative Party has lost the first of two parliamentary elections in a new blow to its embattled leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose future has been questioned by critics within his fractious political party.The Conservatives were defeated in Kingswood, near Bristol, by 8,675 to 11,176 votes, losing a seat that the party had previously held. Votes were cast Thursday to replace two Conservative lawmakers who had quit Parliament, with the first set of results announced early Friday morning.With a general election expected later this year, the result is likely to compound Mr. Sunak’s difficulties at a time when the British economy is shrinking, interest rates are high, and Britain’s health service seems to be in a state of almost permanent crisis. Opinion polls show his party trailing the opposition Labour Party by double-digit margins.The results from the second parliamentary election, in Wellingborough, are expected later on Friday morning. Turnout in both contests was low at less than 40 percent, with many people staying home rather than casting a ballot.A woman leaving a polling station after casting her vote in the Kingswood by-election near Bristol, Britain, on Thursday.Phil Noble/ReutersThe gloomy mood within the Conservative Party had already deepened on Thursday, after the release of economic data showing that in the last months of 2023, Britain had officially entered a recession.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Playing for Time, U.K. Leader Sets Up Chance of U.S. Election Overlap

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      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signaled that voters will go to the polls in the fall, around the time that the United States will be in the midst of its own pivotal vote.When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this week that he was not likely to call a general election in Britain before the second half of the year, he was trying to douse fevered speculation that he might go to the voters as early as May. But in doing so, he set up another tantalizing prospect: that Britain and the United States could hold elections within days or weeks of each other this fall.The last time parliamentary and presidential elections coincided was in 1964, when Britain’s Labour Party ousted the long-governing Conservatives in October, and less than a month later, a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, swept aside a challenge from a right-wing Republican insurgent. The parallels to today are not lost on the excitable denizens of Britain’s political class.“It’s the stuff of gossip around London dinner tables already,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to Washington who is now a member of the House of Lords. For all the Côte du Rhône-fueled analysis, Mr. Darroch conceded, “it’s hard to reach any kind of conclusion about what it means.”That doesn’t mean political soothsayers, amateur and professional, aren’t giving it a go. Some argue that a victory by the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, over President Biden — or even the prospect of one — would be so alarming that it would scare voters in Britain into sticking with Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party, as a bid for predictability and continuity in an uncertain world.A supporter of Donald J. Trump laying out signs on Tuesday before an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesOthers argue that the Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, could win over voters by reminding them of the ideological kinship between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Britain. Mr. Trump praised Mr. Sunak last fall for saying he wanted to water down some of Britain’s ambitious climate goals. “I always knew Sunak was smart,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social account.Still others pooh-pooh the suggestion that British voters would make decisions at the ballot box based on the political direction of another country, even one as close and influential as the United States. Britain’s election, analysts say, is likely to be decided by domestic concerns like the cost-of-living crisis, home-mortgage rates, immigration and the dilapidated state of the National Health Service.And yet, even the skeptics of any direct effect acknowledge that near-simultaneous elections could cause ripples on both sides of the pond, given how Britain and the United States often seem to operate under the same political weather system. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 is often viewed as a canary in the coal mine for Mr. Trump’s victory the following November.Already, the campaigns in both countries are beginning to echo each other, with fiery debates about immigration; the integrity — or otherwise — of political leaders; and social and cultural quarrels, from racial justice to the rights of transgender people. Those themes will be amplified as they reverberate across the ocean, with the American election forming a supersized backdrop to the British campaign.“The U.S. election will receive a huge amount of attention in the run-up to the U.K. election,” said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University. “If the Tories run a culture-war campaign, and people are being fed a diet of wall-to-wall populism because of Trump, that could backfire on them.”Some argue that if the elections coincide, Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, could win over voters by reminding them of the similarities between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesProfessor Ansell identified another risk in the political synchronicity: it could magnify the damage of a disinformation campaign waged by a hostile foreign power, such as the efforts by Russian agents in Britain before the Brexit vote, and in the United States before the 2016 presidential election. “It’s a two-for-one,” he said, noting that both countries remain divided and vulnerable to such manipulation.On Thursday, Mr. Starmer appealed to Britons to move past the fury and divisiveness of the Brexit debates, promising “a politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives.” That was reminiscent of Mr. Biden’s call in his 2021 inaugural address to “join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who studied at Oxford and has advised Conservative Party officials, said he warned the Tories not to turn their campaign into a culture war. “It will get you votes, but it will destroy the electorate in the process,” he said he told them, pointing out that a campaign against “woke” issues had not helped Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dislodge Mr. Trump.Mr. Sunak has vacillated in recent months between a hard-edge and more centrist approach as his party has struggled to get traction with voters. It currently lags Labour by 20 percentage points in most polls. While general elections are frequently held in the spring, Mr. Sunak appears to be playing for time in the hope that his fortunes will improve. That has drawn criticism from Mr. Starmer, who accused him of “squatting” in 10 Downing Street.“I’ve got lots that I want to get on with,” Mr. Sunak told reporters Thursday. He could wait until next January to hold a vote, though analysts say that was unlikely, since campaigning over the Christmas holiday would likely alienate voters and discourage party activists from canvassing door to door.Counting votes in Bath, England, during the U.K.’s last general election in 2019.Ian Walton/ReutersWith summer out for the same reason, Mr. Sunak’s most likely options are October or November (Americans will vote on Nov. 5). There are arguments for choosing either month, including that party conferences are traditionally held in early October.In October 1964, the Conservative government, led by Alec Douglas-Home, narrowly lost to Labour, led by Harold Wilson. Like Mr. Douglas-Home, Mr. Sunak is presiding over a party in power for more than 13 years. The following month, President Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, the hard-right Republican senator from Arizona, who had declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”Sixty years ago, the Atlantic was a greater divide than it is today, and the links between trans-Atlantic elections more tenuous than they are now. Mr. Trump, armed with a social media account and a penchant for lines even more provocative than Mr. Goldwater’s, could easily roil the British campaign, analysts said.And a Trump victory, they added, would pose a devilish challenge to either future British leader. While Mr. Trump treated Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, as an ideological twin, he fell out bitterly with Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, and there was little reason, they said, to hope for less drama in a second Trump term.The biggest pre-election danger — much more likely for Mr. Sunak than for Mr. Starmer, given their politics — is that Mr. Trump will make a formal endorsement, either while he is the Republican nominee or newly elected as president, said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.“Given how negatively most Brits feel toward Trump,” Professor Bale said, “such an endorsement is unlikely to play well for whichever of the two is unlucky enough to find favor with him.” More

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      La lección más importante de la victoria de Javier Milei

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      La elección como presidente de Argentina de Javier Milei —un personaje peculiar, fanfarrón de cabello indomable, con cinco mastines clonados y una costumbre de comunión psíquica con la difunta mascota que les dio origen— ha suscitado un gran debate sobre la verdadera naturaleza del populismo de derecha en nuestra era de descontento general.En Milei hay muchas manifestaciones de una política trumpiana: la energía extravagante y poco convencional, la crítica a las élites corruptas, los ataques a la izquierda, el apoyo de los conservadores sociales y religiosos. Al mismo tiempo, en política económica es mucho más un libertario doctrinario que un mercantilista o populista al estilo Trump, es una versión más extrema de Barry Goldwater y Paul Ryan que un defensor del gasto público y los aranceles. Mientras que el movimiento al que derrotó, la formación peronista que gobernó Argentina durante la mayor parte del siglo XXI, es de hecho más nacionalista y populista en lo económico, pues llegó al poder tras la crisis financiera de 2001 que puso fin al experimento más notable de Argentina con la economía neoliberal.La divergencia entre Trump y Milei puede interpretarse de varias maneras. Una lectura es que el estilo del populismo de derecha es la esencia del asunto, que su sustancia política es negociable siempre que presente figuras que prometan el renacimiento nacional y encarnen algún tipo de rebelión bufonesca, por lo general masculina, contra las normas del progresismo cultural.Otra lectura es que, sí, la política es bastante negociable, pero en realidad hay profundas afinidades ideológicas entre el nacionalismo económico de derecha y lo que podría llamarse paleolibertarismo, a pesar de que no coinciden en cuestiones específicas. En términos estadounidenses, esto significa que el trumpismo lo anticiparon de diferentes maneras Ross Perot y Ron Paul; en términos globales, significa que cabe esperar que los partidos de la derecha populista se muevan constantemente entre tendencias de regulación y libertarias, dependiendo del contexto económico y de los vaivenes políticos.He aquí una tercera interpretación: mientras que el descontento popular debilitó el consenso neoliberal de las décadas de 1990 y 2000 en todo el mundo desarrollado, la era del populismo está creando alineamientos muy distintos en la periferia latinoamericana que en el núcleo euro-estadounidense.En Europa Occidental y Estados Unidos, ahora se ve de manera sistemática a un partido de centroizquierda de las clases profesionales enfrentarse a una coalición populista y de la clase trabajadora de derecha. Los partidos de centroizquierda se han vuelto más progresistas en política económica en comparación con la era de Bill Clinton y Tony Blair, pero se han movido mucho más a la izquierda en cuestiones culturales, sin perder su liderazgo influyente y meritocrático, su sabor neoliberal. Y, en su mayoría, han sido capaces de contener, derrotar o cooptar a aspirantes de izquierda más radicales: Joe Biden al superar a Bernie Sanders en las elecciones primarias demócratas de 2020, Keir Starmer al marginar al corbynismo en el Partido Laborista británico y Emmanuel Macron al forzar a los izquierdistas franceses a votar a su favor en la segunda vuelta contra Marine Le Pen con la estrategia del menor de los males.Por su parte, la derecha populista ha conseguido muchas veces moderar sus impulsos libertarios para apartar a los votantes de clase baja de la coalición progresista, dando lugar a una política de centroderecha que suele favorecer ciertos tipos de proteccionismo y redistribución. Eso podría significar una defensa trumpiana de los programas de prestaciones sociales, los tibios intentos de los conservadores de Boris Johnson de invertir en el desatendido norte de Inglaterra o el gasto en prestaciones familiares de Viktor Orbán en Hungría, así como la recién desbancada coalición populista en Polonia.Te puedes imaginar que el abismo entre estas dos coaliciones mantendrá a Occidente en un estado de crisis latente, en especial teniendo en cuenta la personalidad de Trump, tan propensa a las crisis. Pero también es posible imaginar un futuro en el que este orden se estabilice y normalice un poco y la gente deje de hablar de un terremoto cada vez que un populista asciende al poder o de que la democracia se salva cada vez que un partido del establishment gana unas elecciones.La situación es muy distinta en América Latina. Allí el consenso neoliberal siempre fue más endeble, el centro más frágil, y por ende la era de la rebelión populista ha creado una polarización más clara entre quien esté más a la izquierda y más a la derecha (con la izquierda culturalmente progresista, pero por lo general más expresamente socialista que Biden, Starmer o Macron y la derecha culturalmente tradicional, pero por lo general más libertaria que Trump, Orbán o Le Pen).La nueva alineación en Argentina, con su libertario revolucionario que supera a una izquierda populista-nacionalista, es un ejemplo de este patrón; la contienda entre Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva y Jair Bolsonaro en Brasil el año pasado fue otro. Pero los recientes vaivenes de la política chilena son de especial interés. A principios de la década de 2010, Chile parecía tener un entorno político más o menos estable, con un partido de centroizquierda que gobernaba a través de una Constitución favorable al mercado y una oposición de centroderecha que luchaba por distanciarse de la dictadura de Pinochet. Entonces, las protestas populares echaron por tierra este orden y crearon un giro abrupto hacia la izquierda, además de un intento de imponer una nueva Constitución de izquierda que, a su vez, provocó una reacción adversa, que dejó al país dividido entre un impopular gobierno de izquierda encabezado por un antiguo activista estudiantil y una oposición de derecha en ascenso temporal liderada por un apologista de Pinochet.En cada caso, en relación con las divisiones de Francia y Estados Unidos, se observa un centro más débil y una polarización más profunda entre extremos populistas rivales. Y ahora, si la cuestión para América Latina es qué tan estable será la propia democracia en condiciones tan polarizadas, la cuestión para Europa y Estados Unidos es si la situación argentina o chilena es un presagio de su propio futuro. Tal vez no de inmediato, pero sí después de una nueva ronda de rebeliones populistas, que podría aguardar más allá de alguna crisis o catástrofe o simplemente al otro lado del cambio demográfico.En tal futuro, figuras como Biden, Starmer y Macron ya no podrían gestionar coaliciones de gobierno y la iniciativa en la izquierda pasaría a partidos más radicales como Podemos en España o los Verdes en Alemania, a los progresistas al estilo de Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez en el Congreso de Estados Unidos, a cualquier tipo de política que surja del encuentro entre la izquierda europea y las crecientes poblaciones árabes y musulmanas del continente. Esto daría a la derecha populista la oportunidad de prometer estabilidad y reclamar el centro, pero también crearía incentivos para que la derecha se radicalice aún más, lo que produciría mayores oscilaciones ideológicas cada vez que perdiera una coalición en el poder.Esta es, en cierto modo, la lección más clara de la victoria aplastante de Milei: si no se puede alcanzar la estabilidad tras una ronda de convulsiones populistas, no hay límites inherentes a lo desenfrenado que puede llegar a ser el siguiente ciclo de rebelión.Ross Douthat es columnista de opinión del Times desde 2009. Es autor, más recientemente, de The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. @DouthatNYT • Facebook More

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      Has Latin America Found Its Trump in Javier Milei?

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      The election of Javier Milei, a wild-haired showboating weirdo with five cloned mastiffs and a habit of psychic communion with their departed pet of origin, as president of Argentina has inspired a lot of discussion about the true nature of right-wing populism in our age of general discontent.Milei has many of the signifiers of a Trumpian politics: the gonzo energy, the criticism of corrupt elites and the rants against the left, the support from social and religious conservatives. At the same time, on economic policy he is much more of a doctrinaire libertarian than a Trump-style mercantilist or populist, a more extreme version of Barry Goldwater and Paul Ryan rather than a defender of entitlement spending and tariffs. Whereas the party that he defeated, the Peronist formation that has governed Argentina for most of the 21st century, is actually more economically nationalist and populist, having ascended in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis that ended Argentina’s most notable experiment with neoliberal economics.You can interpret the Trump-Milei divergence in several ways. One reading is that the style of right-wing populism is the essence of the thing, that its policy substance is negotiable so long as it puts forward figures who promise national rebirth and embody some kind of clownish, usually masculine rebellion against the norms of cultural progressivism.Another reading is that, yes, the policy is somewhat negotiable but there are actually deep ideological affinities between right-wing economic nationalism and what might be called paleolibertarianism, despite their disagreement on specific issues. In American terms, this means that Trumpism was anticipated in different ways by Ross Perot and Ron Paul; in global terms, it means that we should expect the parties of the populist right to move back and forth between dirigiste and libertarian tendencies, depending on the economic context and political winds.Here is a third interpretation: While popular discontents have undermined the neoliberal consensus of the 1990s and 2000s all across the developed world, the age of populism is creating very different alignments in the Latin American periphery than in the Euro-American core.In Western Europe and the United States, you now consistently see a center-left party of the professional classes facing off against a populist and working-class coalition on the right. The center-left parties have become more progressive on economic policy relative to the era of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but they have moved much more sharply left on cultural issues while retaining their mandarin and meritocratic leadership, their neoliberal flavor. And they have mostly been able to contain, defeat or co-opt more radical left-wing challengers — Joe Biden by overcoming Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Keir Starmer by marginalizing Corbynism in Britain’s Labour Party, Emmanuel Macron by forcing French leftists to cast a lesser-of-two-evils ballot in his favor in his runoffs against Marine Le Pen.The populist right, meanwhile, has often found success by moderating its libertarian impulses in order to woo downscale voters away from the progressive coalition, yielding a right-of-center politics that usually favors certain kinds of protectionism and redistribution. That could mean a Trumpian defense of entitlement programs, the halfhearted attempts by Boris Johnson’s Tories to invest in the neglected north of England or the spending on family benefits that you see from Viktor Orban in Hungary and the recently unseated populist coalition in Poland.You can imagine the gulf between these two coalitions keeping the West in a state of simmering near crisis — especially with Trump’s crisis-courting personality in the mix. But you can also imagine a future in which this order stabilizes and normalizes somewhat and people stop talking about an earthquake every time a populist wins power or democracy being saved every time an establishment party wins an election.The situation is quite different in Latin America. There the neoliberal consensus was always weaker, the center more fragile, and so the age of populist rebellion has created a clearer polarization between further left and further right — with the left culturally progressive but usually more avowedly socialist than Biden, Starmer or Macron and the right culturally traditional but usually more libertarian than Trump, Orban or Le Pen.The new alignment in Argentina, with its libertarian revolutionary overcoming a populist-nationalist left, is one example of this pattern; the contest between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil last year was another. But the recent swings in Chilean politics are especially instructive. In the early 2010s Chile seemed to have a relatively stable political environment, with a center-left party governing through a market-friendly Constitution and a center-right opposition at pains to distance itself from the Pinochet dictatorship. Then popular rebellions cast this order down, creating a wild yaw leftward and an attempt to impose a new left-wing Constitution that yielded backlash in its turn — leaving the country divided between an unpopular left-wing government headed by a former student activist and a temporarily ascendant right-wing opposition led by a Pinochet apologist.In each case, relative to the divides of France and the United States, you see a weaker center and a deeper polarization between competing populist extremes. And if the question for Latin America now is how stable democracy itself will be under such polarized conditions, the question for Europe and America is whether the Argentine or Chilean situation is a harbinger of their own futures. Perhaps not immediately but after a further round of populist rebellions, which could await beyond some crisis or disaster or simply on the far side of demographic change.In such a future, figures like Biden and Starmer and Macron would no longer be able to manage governing coalitions, and the initiative on the left would pass to more radical parties like Podemos in Spain or the Greens in Germany, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezan progressives in the U.S. Congress, to whatever kind of politics emerges from the encounter between the European left and the continent’s growing Arab and Muslim populations. This would give the populist right an opportunity to promise stability and claim the center — but it would also create incentives for the right to radicalize further, yielding bigger ideological swings every time an incumbent coalition lost.Which is, in a way, the clearest lesson of Milei’s thumping victory: If you can’t reach stability after one round of populist convulsion, there’s no inherent limit on how wild the next cycle of rebellion might get.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Rishi Sunak’s Dilemma: When to Hold an Election He Looks Poised to Lose

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      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is 20 percentage points behind in opinion polls. But history suggests the timing of a vote might make a difference.No question in British politics will be more regularly asked, and reliably brushed aside, over the next few months than when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to call the country’s next general election.He must do so by January 2025. The conventional wisdom is that with his Conservative Party trailing the opposition Labour Party by 20 percentage points in the polls, Mr. Sunak will wait as long as he can. Given the fact that Britons do not like electioneering around Christmas or in the dead of winter, that would suggest a vote next fall.But some of Mr. Sunak’s colleagues last week pushed for an earlier timetable. Having lost a critical legal ruling on his flagship immigration policy, the prime minister came under pressure from the right of his party to go to the polls in the spring if the House of Lords blocks the government’s efforts to revamp legislation to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.Turning the election into a referendum on immigration might deflect attention from the economic woes plaguing Britain. But that assumes voters could be persuaded to swing to the Conservatives out of a fear of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats, rather than blaming the party for a stagnant economy, a cost-of-living crisis and hollowed out public services.Britain’s Supreme Court last week struck down the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda as unlawful. But Mr. Sunak has vowed to keep the matter alive by negotiating a new treaty with the East African country that would include a legally binding commitment not to remove migrants sent there by Britain — one of the court’s objections.Mr. Sunak also pledged emergency legislation that would declare Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers. It remains unclear whether that would survive legal challenges and in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament that has the right to review the legislation and could block it (though its appetite for a full-scale clash with the government was not clear.)“I know the British people will want this new law to pass so we can get flights off to Rwanda,” Mr. Sunak told reporters last week. “Whether it’s the House of Lords or the Labour Party standing in our way, I will take them on because I want to get this thing done and I want to stop the boats.”Asylum seekers disembark from a lifeboat in Dungeness, England, after being picked up at sea while crossing the English Channel.Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolitical analysts say immigration remains a resonant issue in England’s north and Midlands, where support for the Conservatives in 2019 gave the party a landslide general election victory. Those voters, many of whom traditionally supported the Labour Party, were drawn to the Tory slogan, “Get Brexit done.”“Immigration is now the top priority for 2019 Conservative Party voters, above even the cost-of-living crisis and the dire state of the country’s National Health Service,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has written about populism and identity politics.“This means, in short, that Rishi Sunak has no way of winning the next election unless he connects with these voters by reducing immigration and regaining control of the country’s borders,” he said. “Yet both of those things currently look unlikely.”Far from accelerating the date of an election, Professor Goodwin argued that the salience of immigration would pressure Mr. Sunak to delay a vote. It will take months to surmount the legal problems with the existing policy, the professor said, let alone begin one-way flights to Rwanda.Other experts are more skeptical that an immigration-dominated election would play to the advantage of the Tories. Most voters view the party negatively on immigration, said Sophie Stowers, a researcher at the U.K. in a Changing Europe, a think tank in London. The number of people crossing the channel has remained stubbornly high since Mr. Sunak became prime minister, while legal migration has soared.“To me, it seems counterintuitive to bring attention to an issue where you have a poor image with the public,” Ms. Stowers said.The question is whether the Conservatives would do even worse if the election were decided on the economy, which matters more than migration to voters at large, according to opinion polls. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation. But he has yet to achieve the other two: reviving growth and reducing public debt.Clothing for sale in London last month. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation.Hannah Mckay/ReutersIt’s not yet clear that the economic news will improve between the spring and fall, analysts said. While inflation has cooled, the lingering effect of higher interest rates — propelled upward by Liz Truss’s market-shaking tax policies last year — is still cascading through the economy in the form of higher home mortgage rates.Historically, many successful prime ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, called elections earlier than they needed, rather than risk becoming the victim of unforeseen events. They usually opted for the summer months, when the weather — and the public mood — is typically better, although Boris Johnson successfully broke that pattern with his victory in December 2019.Mr. Sunak’s room for maneuver is limited. One option would be holding the vote in May 2024 to coincide with local elections, or in June. Another possibility would be October or November, which would coincide with elections in the United States. But the possibility of a victory by Donald J. Trump could have an unpredictable effect, potentially pushing some British voters to a more centrist option. As a last resort, Mr. Sunak could hold off until Jan. 28, 2025.Some of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors paid a high price for miscalculating the timing of elections. Despite speculation that he would call an election in 1978, the Labour Party prime minister James Callaghan delayed voting until the following year. Labor unrest escalated into what became known as the “winter of discontent,” sweeping Mrs. Thatcher to victory in 1979.Margaret Thatcher, campaigning in 1979, won election as prime minister after the Labour Party incumbent, James Callaghan, decided not to call an election the previous year.Press Association, via Associated PressGordon Brown, another Labour prime minister, had been expected to capitalize on his early popularity by calling an election soon after taking over from Tony Blair in 2007. Instead, he delayed, ultimately losing power in 2010.Theresa May made the opposite decision, calling an early election in 2017 in which she lost her majority, though probably more because of her unpopular agenda and poor campaign skills than bad timing.“Once the election is underway, everything is on the table,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “You lose control of the agenda.”Trying to build an election campaign around the issue of small boats bringing migrants is likely to fail, Mr. Kellner added, suggesting Mr. Sunak will only call an early vote if he calculates he has a realistic prospect of keeping his job.“If, at the point when you have to make a decision, you have no chance of winning, then you might as well wait,” he said, “because maybe there is a five percent chance of winning in six months, and a five percent chance is better than no chance.” More

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      Under Pressure, U.K.’s Sunak Tries Another Cabinet Reset With a Swerve to Center

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      After more than a year as prime minister, Rishi Sunak, a Conservative, has failed to close a yawning gap in the polls. On Monday he did something new.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain fired one of his most senior and divisive ministers on Monday, in a reshuffle of his top team that unexpectedly brought a centrist predecessor, David Cameron, back into government.The departure of Suella Braverman as home secretary and the surprise return of Mr. Cameron as foreign secretary were the latest in a series of convulsions that have rocked the governing Conservative Party since the fateful Brexit referendum that Mr. Cameron called in 2016, and signaled the peril facing Mr. Sunak as he nears a general election expected next year.After 13 years in Downing Street, the Conservatives’ grip on power appears to be slipping, with the party trailing Labour by around 20 points in the polls against a challenging economic backdrop, with sluggish growth and inflation eroding living standards, and a public sector under acute strain after years of Conservative-led austerity.Mr. Sunak has tried various gambits to address his party’s unpopularity with voters, weakening environmental targets, pledging to defend motorists and promising tougher sentencing for serious criminals. None seem to have worked.At the same time, Ms. Braverman, who is seen as a rival within the party, had become increasingly emboldened as home secretary, raising her profile and appearing to prepare the ground for a leadership bid if the Conservatives lose the election as many expect.Last week she wrote an extraordinary opinion article in The Times of London, which was not authorized by Downing Street, in which she criticized the police for not seeking to ban a pro-Palestinian protest march in the capital, and described the demonstrators as “hate marchers” and “Islamists.”Protesters in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, on Vauxhall Bridge in London, on Saturday.Hollie Adams/ReutersAfter counterprotesters clashed with the police on Saturday, critics accused Ms. Braverman of inflaming tensions and encouraging far-right demonstrators onto the streets, and her position was judged untenable by Downing Street.Mr. Sunak and Ms. Braverman spoke by phone on Monday, and in the shuffle of jobs that followed her departure, she was replaced by the more emollient former foreign secretary, James Cleverly, freeing up his position for Mr. Cameron.Both men are regarded as moderates and the changes appeared to signal a shift away from the divisive politics that were championed by Ms. Braverman, whose focus on cultural issues had become a feature of Mr. Sunak’s government in recent months.Neither of the two appointments was good news for the right-wing faction of the Conservative Party where Ms. Braverman had a small but vocal group of supporters.Nor was Mr. Sunak’s decision to keep Jeremy Hunt as chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hunt’s resistance to offering tax cuts has antagonized a wider group of Conservative lawmakers. He, like Mr. Cameron, campaigned against Brexit in 2016, but Mr. Hunt has made controlling inflation his priority and says that reducing taxes will have to wait.The return to the cabinet of Mr. Cameron may remind some voters of the political chaos that he triggered in 2016 when Britons ignored his recommendation and narrowly voted to leave the European Union. Mr. Sunak is the fourth Conservative leader to have become prime minister since Mr. Cameron stood aside after the referendum result, which sent shock waves around Europe.David Cameron, Britain’s new foreign secretary, departing 10 Downing Street on Monday.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sunak restored some stability when he succeeded Liz Truss as prime minister last year, but his latest reshuffle risks reopening ideological divisions that have dogged the party in recent years. Though the salience of Brexit has faded in British politics, Mr. Cameron — who led the campaign against it — will now be partly responsible for promoting the policy around the globe.Yet, while bringing back Mr. Cameron is a political gamble, Mr. Sunak may have judged the risk worthwhile. He has limited time to win back voters, or possibly even to limit the scale of a defeat in the looming election.Ms. Braverman had lost her job as home secretary once before, under the short-lived government of Ms. Truss, but she was given it back by Mr. Sunak when he entered Downing Street. She used her position in cabinet to push hard-right policies and embraced polarizing rhetoric, describing migration as a “hurricane,” the arrival of asylum seekers on the British coast as an “invasion” and homelessness as a “lifestyle choice.”While Mr. Sunak’s language was more measured, he supported most of her ideas — in particular, her pursuit of a policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. That faces a critical test on Wednesday when the country’s Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on its legality following a series of challenges.Mr. Sunak visiting an Ikea distribution center in Dartford, Kent, in June.Pool photo by Jack HillThe decision to bring back Mr. Cameron, who led the Conservatives between 2005-16, seemed at odds with Mr. Sunak’s recent claims at his party’s annual conference to be an agent of change.It also underscored a constitutional requirement of Britain’s political system that ministers hold a seat in Parliament so they can propose legislation and be held to account by fellow lawmakers. As a consequence Mr. Sunak on Monday nominated Mr. Cameron for a seat in the House of Lords, Parliament’s less powerful, unelected upper chamber.It is not the first time in the modern era that a foreign secretary has been a member of the House of Lords, rather than the House of Commons: Peter Carington, who became Lord Carrington — and as such, gained a second r in his name — filled that role between 1979-82. He resigned amid the Falklands crisis, when troops from Argentina occupied a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic in 1982, sparking a brief conflict.While the situation is not unique, Mr. Cameron’s status as a member of the House of Lords has already raised tensions among lawmakers in the House of Commons as he will normally speak not to them, but to an assembly of unelected members of the upper chamber.Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the House of Commons, said on Monday that he was looking into ways in which the new foreign secretary could be held accountable by elected lawmakers. It was “especially important” that they should be able to scrutinize his work, “given the gravity of the current international situation,” Mr. Hoyle said in Parliament. More