Osborne: Sunak should tell Tory MPs to ‘put up or shut up’ and announce election date now
Former chancellor George Osborne has said the prime minister should tell Tory MPs to “put up or shut up” and announce the general election date now.
Mr Osborne said the public would like to see a “flash of steel” from Rishi Sunak in dealing with disquiet within the party.
“[Mr Sunak] is so worried about reigniting the Tory civil war. [But] he’s allowed the civil war to be ignited without necessarily taking a strong position on it,” he said on his Political Currency podcast.
“I think it’d be very much to his credit to say, ‘look, there are some people in the party that don’t like what I’m doing and don’t like the way I’m leading it’.
“[He should say] ‘fine – but I’ll tell you what, the way I’m doing it is moral, it’s economically competent, it’s going to deliver the results for Britain. And if they don’t like it, they can either put up or shut up.’ And I think people would like a flash of steel.”
Mr Osborne also said if he were in Mr Sunak’s shoes, he would put an end to speculation about when the election will be.
“I would today say: ‘I’ll tell you when the general election is going to be, it’s going to be on this date.’ That ends all the speculation about early elections. It means you don’t go through the whole summer with [people asking] is it going to be October or November?
“The marginal advantage he’s going to get by having a bit of a surprise that it’s late October or mid-November or early December is more than outweighed by the endless speculation.
“And the only reason people know he isn’t calling an election right now is because he couldn’t win it because he’s behind in the polls.”
The prime minister has ruled out an election on 2 May – the same date as many local elections around the country.
But he has not gone any further in revealing when he plans to face voters, only saying that his “working assumption” was for it to happen in the second half of this year.
The latest Mr Sunak can hold a vote is January 2025.
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-uk-politics-sunak-starmer-general-election-vote-labour-tories-speaker-sky-news-politics-hub-12593360
