What will the UK election be won and lost on, what matters to voters?

Tim Bale, Professor of Politics from Queen Mary University of London spoke to CGTN Europe on the UK general election.

Transcript

00:00 Well let's talk to Tim Bell who's Professor of Politics at London's Queen Mary University.

00:04 Good to see you Professor, welcome back to the programme. So we're almost certainly going to

00:08 see an election in the UK this year. There has of course been endless speculation over the timing of

00:12 it. Will that though make any difference to what most people think is a foregone conclusion?

00:16 Well I guess if you're a Conservative MP you may hope that something will turn up

00:21 between now and the probable date of the election which is the autumn of this year.

00:27 And that I think speaks to some concern on the part of Tory MPs when they hear that the Prime

00:33 Minister is thinking of going early. I think when you're 20 points behind in the opinion polls that

00:39 looks rather a gamble. So if there is a big loss for the Conservative Party what could that mean

00:46 for the future direction of it? Well I mean if you look at what's happened to the Conservative

00:52 Party before when it's lost elections very badly, for example 1997, what we tend to see is the

00:59 Conservative Party double down on the approach it takes initially in opposition and that normally

01:05 means moving towards if you like the authoritarian right of the political spectrum. It then takes a

01:11 couple of elections before they really wake up and smell the coffee as it were and realise that

01:17 they have to move back into the centre in order to win back those voters who have deserted them.

01:23 So if the past is any guide to the present or indeed the future then I would expect the

01:28 Conservatives probably, depending on how badly they lose, to be out of power for at least a

01:33 couple of terms. And what about Richard Synec himself? This will be the first time he goes

01:39 before the electorate as Prime Minister after his two predecessors were forced out of office

01:44 and he's not exactly been a unifying figure has he? No he hasn't. He's had big party management

01:50 problems in part because the policies that he has pursued has satisfied neither side of his

01:57 political party. So for example if we take the issue of immigration in particular this plan of

02:02 the government to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, on the one hand it strikes many on the so-called

02:11 soft centre if you like of the Conservative Party as too harsh and possibly in conflict with

02:17 international law and on the other hand for the hard right of the party it doesn't go far enough

02:22 in taking radical action to do something which they believe has to be done in order to win the

02:28 party a general election. Well you mentioned that issue of immigration it's obviously been

02:32 a really big one but actually when it comes to what voters are looking for is that the kind of

02:36 thing that people care about or is it more likely things like the cost of living crisis

02:41 and how well off they feel? Well I mean I think if you look at how immigration polls with the public

02:48 it has risen in importance over the last year or so and I think that is in part because the

02:53 government has spent a long time talking about it as have their friends in the print media but if

02:59 you look more closely at the polling as you suggest in fact it's nowhere near as important

03:04 to most people as the economy the cost of living and inflation on the one hand and the state of

03:09 the National Health Service and other public services on the other so it does remain somewhat

03:14 of a mystery why Conservative MPs see immigration as some sort of magic bullet. I think voters have

03:20 rather more pressing concerns at the moment although it's not something immigration that

03:24 they they care absolutely nothing about that's true. Tim great to speak to you thank you for

03:29 joining us today that's Professor Tim Bale from London's Queen Mary University.