Can Prime Minister Sunak turn around the fortunes of the Conservative Party?
Dr Steve McCabe, Associate Professor at Birmingham City University with analysis on the current state of the Conservative Party.
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00:00 I think that Rishi Sonek is a bit like the character in Mission Impossible played by
00:08 Tom Cruise.
00:09 Yeah, the clock is ticking.
00:11 Yeah, let's face it.
00:12 So the next election is in all likelihood going to be a year from now or thereabouts
00:17 in the autumn of 2024.
00:19 His ability to do something really substantial in terms of the economy, it looks pretty dismal.
00:25 So I suspect the opinion polls are not going to improve.
00:28 And as I say, I think as the sort of the election becomes closer, we're probably going to see
00:32 more of it come the sort of the party conference season in September and October.
00:37 We're going to get more of these very, very sort of desperate and dare I say right wing
00:40 policies which the sort of the Conservative Party, certainly under Sonek and Bruce Lewis
00:45 and of course Johnson, were willing to sort of to encamp or encompass.
00:50 The latest opinion polls give Labour around a 20 point lead over the Conservatives at
00:54 46 percent to around 25 percent.
00:59 That massive lead has led to some commentators speculating that many Conservatives are resigned
01:05 to losing the next general election.
01:07 Well perhaps so, but again, let's not forget the sort of when Johnson came to power four
01:11 years ago and he's of arrested control from Theresa May, who could not get Brexit done,
01:18 which of course he did do.
01:19 Johnson expelled many of the sort of the senior members of the Conservative Party.
01:23 I used the expression the one nation Tories.
01:25 So if you like the sort of the socially liberal beating heart of that party was effectively
01:30 expunged and of course what we've got is a sort of a cadre of MPs that entered, particularly
01:35 from the red wall seats, who were perhaps much more sort of right wing than perhaps
01:39 even the Conservative Party would have traditionally sort of been willing to embrace.
01:44 Criticism has mounted for Prime Minister Sonek, particularly surrounding the asylum seeker
01:50 crisis.
01:51 However, it is a difficult and complicated situation that would pose problems for any
01:58 of the political parties should they be in office.
02:02 We're talking about 40,000 coming in boats and sort of through illegal means.
02:06 And of course the reality we never know because of course some sort of get through the net
02:10 and we never sort of get to know the true figure.
02:13 Legal migration is the sort of the bigger issue and that's well over half a million,
02:16 which of course the Conservative Party said they were going to bring down.
02:19 But of course as we sort of know in the Conservative Party have sort of just loosened the rules
02:24 on sort of key workers in the construction industry.
02:27 What this brings us always back to is Brexit and the sort of shortage of workers.
02:31 Thinking at the edges of the sort of the deal that we have with Europe and allowing more
02:34 people to come in from sort of the European Union may solve that problem.
02:38 But hey, yeah, I mean Britain is, it's an issue because quite clearly we have to find
02:44 places for these people to live.
02:46 And there's sort of many people to say what about the existing problems that are in NHS
02:50 and housing and so on and so forth.
02:51 So there are big, big difficulties for both parties.
02:54 But yeah, clearly if Labour Party are in power in 12 months or so, they're going to have
02:57 to confront this issue.
02:58 And undoubtedly they'll have sort of other parties snapping at their heels saying what
03:02 are you going to do?
03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]