It all started out comically enough. When British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stood outside 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain to announce the country’s July 4 snap election, there was a palpable feeling of excitement. Five years (and three prime ministers) since Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019, the British people would finally get their chance to elect a new government—one that, if the polls are to be believed, will almost certainly end with Sunak’s ruling Conservatives getting booted from power after 14 years.
But whatever excitement the snap election generated seemed to quickly give way to bewilderment and disillusionment as, gaffe after gaffe, the Conservatives appeared to sacrifice what little hope they had of narrowing Labour’s poll lead and consequently staving off an electoral wipeout. Just this week, Sunak’s party had to withdraw support from two of its parliamentary candidates after it was revealed that they and a slew of other Conservative Party staffers had allegedly placed bets on the timing of the election using insider knowledge—a potentially criminal offense. (The Labour Party has also withdrawn support from one of its candidates this week after he admitted to placing a bet… that he would lose.) As with all good British scandals, this one quickly earned the moniker “Gamblegate.”
Yet despite all the drama, which includes the resurgence of arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, Britons can’t seem to escape the feeling that this potentially seismic election is actually fairly dull. The Economist, in its endorsement of opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, dubbed it a “low-wattage campaign.” The Financial Times has described it as “lackluster.” The London Review of Books’ verdict: “boring and frustrating.”
Part of this contest’s lack of excitement comes down to the fact that, unlike the simultaneous campaign taking place in France (where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and a new left-wing alliance threaten to undermine what remains of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency) or the forthcoming vote across the Atlantic in the U.S. (where a Biden-Trump rematch could potentially result in a second Trump term), no one is under any illusions about how this election will end. Labour has enjoyed a more than 18-month double-digit poll lead over the Tories, as the Conservatives are known—one that hasn’t been seen to narrow even as the election campaign enters its final week. While the number of seats the opposition party is poised to win varies from poll to poll, all of the pollsters are virtually unanimous in their outcome. So much so, in fact, that the Conservatives have spent the final weeks of the campaign warning voters against handing Labour a so-called “supermajority,” in a tacit acknowledgement of their own electoral fate. (While the term means something in an American political context, it doesn’t make much sense in the British one.)
But there are other factors, too. The British media and commentariat’s fixation on the polls has left little room for substantive discussions on actual policy—something that neither Labour or the Conservatives have been particularly forthcoming about anyway. Each of the party’s manifestos, which are meant to set out their plan for government should they be elected, have offered little detail about how they would tackle the myriad of problems facing Britain, from its cost-of-living crisis to its ailing National Health Service. Among the top pledges made by the Conservatives, who have struggled to campaign on their lackluster record in government, include promises to impose a new “National Service” for young people, to increase defense spending, and to lower taxes for pensioners. In addition to cutting NHS wait times and improving the country’s relationship with the E.U., the Labour Party has made relatively vague promises to bring “change,” “stop the chaos,” and “restore hope.” So cautious has Labour been about being perceived to be careless with the country’s finances it has barely made any major tax or spending commitments at all. Indeed, a new report comparing the Conservative and Labour manifestos by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain’s leading economic research think tank, concluded that the lack of specificity from both parties means that Britons will be forced to vote “in a knowledge vacuum.”
Unlike previous British elections in 2017 and 2019, which were primarily dominated by Brexit, “there isn’t a significant ideological gulf between the two parties,” Anand Menon, the director of U.K. in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank, tells TIME. “There’s very little in the way of real exciting policy being discussed and I think there is a general sense that they’re not really going to change anything.”
The leaders at the center of this election haven’t helped matters, either. Neither Sunak nor Starmer are overwhelmingly popular figures—a reality that was made abundantly clear when, during their final televised debate, one prospective voter asked: “Are you two really the best we’ve got?”
In some ways, this is by design. When Sunak became prime minister in late 2022, he pledged to bring an end to the instability left by his predecessors Liz Truss (who lasted just 44 days before she resigned after having crashed the British economy) and Johnson (who called it quits after a series of ethics scandals). Starmer, similarly, promised to bring more pragmatism and competence to the Labour leadership after taking over the party from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, pledging to transform Labour from a party of protest into an electable party of government. At the time, both men’s managerial and technocratic demeanors were regarded as an asset—at least, until they weren’t.
“We don’t have inspirational, charismatic leaders,” Menon says of Sunak and Starmer. “They’re both really technocratic. They’re both really boring. They’re both clearly really uncomfortable doing the stuff politicians do, like debates and speeches.”
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And it’s perhaps because of them that what is otherwise seen as an enormously consequential election feels so bland. “It’s not just a seismic election because the Tories look like they’re going to get absolutely thrashed,” Menon says. “It’s a seismic election because the stakes are really, really high and you’re going to have someone winning by a landslide who isn’t very popular.”
There’s an argument to be made that boring politics is just what Britain needs, particularly after the years of instability brought on by Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and all of the economic volatility that has followed. But unless that boredom is complemented with meaningful change, it could easily give way to disillusionment—and more of the shambolic politics that Britons are so keen to get away from.
“The problems are so big, the public are so volatile,” Menon says, noting that even with a potentially historic victory, Labour’s support will likely be very shallow. “The whole thing is very, very fragile.”
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