Come on, Rishi! Ditch the tasteless jargon, writes STEVE HILTON

Nearly 30 years ago, during the 1997 General Election, I helped write and produce a party political broadcast for the Conservatives that was never aired – because the then prime minister John Major vetoed it.

The short film featured a fictionalised conversation between Labour leader Tony Blair and one of the ‘people in the dark’ that his Shadow Cabinet colleague Clare Short had said were jeopardising Labour’s chance of victory for portraying Blair as an unprincipled ‘macho man’.

The message was similar to that of the entire Conservative campaign: that Blair’s centrist ‘New Labour’ brand was a cynical marketing ploy to get elected, and that in government the party would go back to its old Left-wing ways.

Major refused to let the broadcast go ahead because he considered it too negative, and in poor taste. I got the strong impression that Major knew the Conservative Party was heading for a landslide defeat and wanted to go out in as honourable a way as possible.

I’m reminded of all this as I watch the first few faltering steps of Rishi Sunak’s election campaign. Like Major, Sunak is an obviously serious and decent man who has a better record than perhaps his critics allow. Both men represent a particular, and proud, strain of the Conservative tradition: not especially ideological but level-headed and pragmatic.

So far I’m getting strong 1997 vibes from Conservatives, but somehow I don’t think Sunak has accepted the inevitability of defeat, writes STEVE HILTON

The worst thing about Sunak’s Downing Street speech on Wednesday wasn’t the dismal weather ruining his jacket – but his words

The difference is, a fiercely determined Major had already won an election that all the polls and pundits told him he would lose, in 1992.

It was obvious then that Major badly wanted to win. He, was comfortable with an advertising campaign (‘Labour’s Tax Bombshell’) that aggressively highlighted how badly people would be hit by a Labour victory. He displayed an extraordinary level of personal, positive energy which made all the difference, most visibly represented in his ‘soapbox’ street campaigning.

The question is: does Rishi Sunak, in his heart, believe that the 2024 election is like 1997, or 1992?

So far, I’m getting strong 1997 vibes. And that’s a problem.

Admittedly, I’m observing this as an American citizen, having moved to California some years ago from Britain where I worked as prime minister David Cameron’s strategy adviser. But I care very much about Britain’s future, and after all the years I spent working for the Conservative Party, I want it to succeed.

Do the Tories themselves even want to win this election, though?

In recent years you’d be forgiven for thinking the party has a death-wish. From the ridiculous cycling through multiple leaders, to the self-inflicted wound of a scientifically illiterate Covid lockdown, to the absence of any kind of coherent and sustained post-Brexit policy strategy, it feels as if ‘running out of steam’ is too generous a term for what has been going on.

During visits back to the UK for Christmas in the past couple of years, I’ve been struck by the resigned attitude of many friends who have been involved in, or close to, Conservative politics at the highest level.

‘We really need to lose the next election’; ‘We can’t go on like this’; ‘It’s just embarrassing – much better to be wiped out and then we can rebuild from there’ . . . all of these have been typical comments. In reply, I’d say: ‘It surely can’t be that bad?’

‘Oh, you have no idea,’ would come the reply. ‘It’s a complete joke. They’ve got to go.’

This feeling of impending – and deserved – doom now seems to have infected much of the Conservative parliamentary party, with record numbers of MPs standing down, including former leadership candidates Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom.

Add to all this the totally avoidable shambles of the election announcement: the prime minister ‘drowned out’ first by the rain and then by the 1997 New Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better, and then Sunak making a campaign visit to Belfast just yards from where the Titanic was built – and you have the impression of a party whose chances of winning are as dead as Monty Python’s parrot. Of course, all campaigns have bad luck from time to time.

And the truth is that when you’re ahead, missteps are often ignored, whereas even the tiniest screw-up is magnified into a ‘sinking ship’ metaphor when a party’s fortunes are on the slide.

But the worst thing about Sunak’s Downing Street speech on Wednesday wasn’t even the wetness of his jacket – but his words.

Dutifully listing his achievements with all the passion of someone checking off their shopping list, trotting out some utterly unmemorable platitudes about securing the future, throwing in a few pathetically weak jabs at Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour – the whole thing was shockingly, stunningly limp. Less a rallying cry than a polite mumble. Absolutely hopeless. No edge, no bite, nothing.

As for the Conservative Party itself – it didn’t even seem to be aware that an election had been called, judging by its official website which featured no reference to Sunak’s announcement or the coming campaign.

If this is how the Tories intend to play the next few weeks, they really have given up. But somehow I don’t think Sunak does accept the inevitability of defeat.

You don’t get to be in his position, with all the success he has achieved in his career and his life, without exceptional drive and determination. I simply cannot believe that someone that impressive – Oxford, Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Prime Minister within seven years of becoming an MP – is content to just drift out of office without a fight.

Come on Rishi! Let’s see the energy shown in your first Prime Minister’s Questions – when you spoke of Brexit, levelling up and winning elections

Sunak must ditch the bland, plaintive politician-speak and get truly fired up, taking control of the agenda with ideas that Labour can’t match

So let’s see some fight, Rishi! Let’s see the energy shown in your first Prime Minister’s Questions – when you spoke of Brexit, levelling up and winning elections. Let’s see a breathtakingly bold agenda in your manifesto, focused on the economy, with clear policies to deliver direct benefits to working people and families. 

And let’s see a brutally effective demolition job on the Labour Party and what it represents. Because here’s the really big difference with the 1997 election: Sir Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair – not by a long way.

Starmer lacks Blair’s charisma. He has all the magnetism of the infamous ‘Liz Truss lettuce’.

More substantively, though, today’s Labour Party is far more Left-wing than the 1997 version – note the massive policy concessions Starmer made to the unions just days ago. Read Labour’s policy documents and you are taken back to the disastrous ‘corporatism’ of the 1970s, which ended in the humiliation of the Winter of Discontent.

Looking back on the 1997 campaign, I can see that John Major was right about that aborted broadcast. Labour’s landslide really was inevitable. Blair really did represent something new.

None of that holds in today’s political world. Now, after years of chaos, Britain seems to be on the right track. But, make no mistake, a Labour government would set things back. What’s needed now from Sunak is energy, aggression and inspiration – and then he could pull off an even greater upset than John Major achieved in 1992.

But he must ditch the bland, plaintive politician-speak and get truly fired up. Take control of the agenda with ideas that Labour can’t match and attacks that Labour can’t deny. The election is all to play for – we just need to know whether the Prime Minister and his team are ready to go for it with everything they’ve got.