As the British Assembly elections approach, Rishi Sunak prepares for defeat

Two-thirds of Britons think he is a bad prime minister, a figure that has more than doubled since he took office at the end of October 2022, according to polling firm YouGov. Less than three weeks before the July 4 assembly elections, the accounts are not looking good for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Having entered Downing Street with the aim of bringing economic stability to the United Kingdom, he is today weighed down by the wear and tear of the Conservatives after fourteen years in power.

The economy is good

Since his arrival, even as the economy has shown little growth and inflation has come down sharply, Rishi Sunak is struggling to take credit for his party, which is more divided than ever and unbranded.

Even his insistence on trying to implement a Conservative plan to deport migrants to Rwanda, which he had promised to abandon if Labor came to power, was not enough to satisfy the Tories' right wing.

A chain of errors

Since he called the election, his campaign has been a test: poor polling, the entry of anti-immigration candidate Nigel Farage into the race and repeated mistakes. Much criticized, his brief stay in France to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings forced him to recognize the “error” and apologize.

Are these missteps due to his inexperience in politics? Rishi Sunak left the world of finance in 2015, aged 44, to run as an MP for Yorkshire.

After his election, the rise of this Brexit supporter was meteoric. In early 2020, he was promoted to the prestigious post of Finance Minister. Before Boris Johnson leaves in 2022, by resigning from the government after another scandal involving the former prime minister.

Will its decline be so rapid? No sitting Prime Minister in the United Kingdom has ever lost their position in a general election. And Rishi Sunak is contesting from a constituency considered safe for his side. His future among the Conservatives will be determined by the number of MPs the party retains. Rishi Sunak vowed to fight “till the last day” despite the declared defeat.