Rishi Sunak has taken his first decisive step of 2024 – killing off fevered speculation about a May general election.
The Prime Minister insisted his “working assumption” is that he will call the national vote in the second half of this year.
While not quite firing the starting gun on a general election campaign, the PM effectively told everyone to get on their marks.
It was a shrewd move by the Tory Party leader as it extinguishes allegations that he has “bottled it” if he doesn’t call a May poll.
Gordon Brown was haunted by the election that never was in 2008.
After being handed power by Tony Blair a year earlier, journalists were briefed that the new PM could capitalise in an early vote the following Spring.
Despite intense speculation the election never happened. Brown never recovered. Labour have been out of government for 14 years.
Mr Sunak probably now has ten or eleven months to convince voters that he should remain in No 10 and lead the country for another five years.
One thing is clear, if yesterday is anything to go by, Mr Sunak is a decisive leader. Sir Keir Starmer, not so.
Last year the PM had a clear set of five objectives – to halve inflation, grow the economy, cut debt, reduce NHS waiting lists and to stop the boats.
He is expected to achieve most of those when final economic data is released in the Spring.
That clarity was repeated during a visit to Nottinghamshire on Thursday when Mr Sunak vowed to keep managing the economy well, tackling illegal migration and helping the NHS.
The upbeat Prime Minister also repeated his vow to cut people’s taxes.
In contrast, Sir Keir used a major speech in Bristol to once again reveal to the world that he is indecisive.
After spending 20 minutes trashing the Tories and racking up the political point scoring, Sir Keir then shamelessly hit out at Westminster institutions and political cynicism.
His answers to questions over tax policy were also decidedly opaque.
True to form the Labour leader was not to oversell himself but ended up overselling himself with some bold rhetoric but with no details of how he was going to achieve or pay for it.
Ultimately, the sum of his cliche-fest was, “we’re better than the other lot”.
There’s no doubt that the Tories have a mountain to climb. They are around 20-points down in the polls.
But polls often close dramatically in the run-up to an election.
The cost of living crisis is easing thanks to plunging inflation and the economy is expected to rebound after a tough year, mainly due to external factors.
Like Mr Sunak’s approach, there are reasons to be optimistic for 2024.
