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British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak disembarks from a plane at Inverness Airport in Inverness, Scotland, on May 23. WPA Pool/Getty Images
It's hard to find a more textbook example of a political debate out of touch with real-world concerns than Tuesday's Q&A.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland bragged that annual inflation had fallen to 2.7 percent, after which Conservative Leader Pierre Poiriervre fired back, falsely claiming that inflation was 35 percent above target.
They argued over who was more incompetent. Freeland pointed out that the Bank of Canada's target was 1-3%. Poirierbre argued for 2%. If you're interested, the truth is that central banks' target is in the 1-3% range, and they're aiming for the middle point.
But most people don't care. They care about interest rates and rising prices, but they don't care about decimal points on the inflation rate. One is reality, the other is an empty number.
The difference between the two is, incidentally, why British Chancellor Rishi Sunak is so unlikely to bet on an early election: He is betting that the recent economic recovery will lead to a victory in July's general election.
Britain recently emerged from a mild recession and inflation has fallen to 2.3%. But Mr Sunak cannot expect voters to care about those figures. The question is whether the recent improvement has really changed how Britons feel about the economy, or about the prime minister.
One person to watch closely is Mr Sunak's counterpart, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has also seen his approval ratings fall due to rising prices of goods and houses, and who is questioning whether an economic recovery will translate into a turnaround in his political fortunes. Mr Sunak's election campaign will be a case study.
Sunak, like Trudeau, is trailing his closest opponent by about 20 percentage points and is leading an old-guard government trying to appeal to a public that appears to have stopped listening.
In some ways, the UK was a politically odd place for Canada: Many of the criticisms levelled at the British Conservative Party were reminiscent of those levelled at the Canadian Liberal Party, despite their political polar opposites. The UK Conservatives were feeling the effects of a post-pandemic political hangover, a string of minor scandals, and the anxiety of a nation watching its purchasing power shrink with inflation.
One difference is that Britain's Conservative Party has had five prime ministers during Mr. Trudeau's 8 1/2 years in office. But both Mr. Sunak and Mr. Trudeau are politically moribund. They are left wondering whether a modest economic recovery could revive their political fortunes.
There, Mr Sunak, like Ms Freeland, boasted that inflation had returned to normal. This is more or less true in both countries, but people still feel that prices are much higher than they used to be: A YouGov poll found that 52% of Britons believe food prices are much higher than they were a year ago, and a further 31% feel they are a little higher.
This is a lingering aftereffect of rising inflation. Surveys show that people in Canada, the UK and the US believe inflation is higher than it actually is and that it is weakening the economy. In the UK, inflation has fallen significantly, but the number of people who think the government is not doing a good job of dealing with inflation has only slightly decreased.
All this suggests that Sunak's bet on an instant vote would be disastrous, mainly justified by the fact that he is likely to lose no matter when the vote takes place: he might make some progress by telling people that things are getting better, but they probably won't feel that this is true.
In theory, Mr. Trudeau has more time. He can hope the Bank of Canada will start cutting interest rates in June, but even so, many people with mortgages are still under pressure on their paychecks. Rents are likely to keep rising as population growth continues to outpace homebuilding. And then the challenge will be to convince disgruntled voters that Mr. Trudeau represents hope for the future.
Mr. Sunak's campaign, meanwhile, is offering Mr. Trudeau's a test case for an unpopular prime minister trying to translate a modest economic recovery into a full-blown political comeback — and they can only hope that Mr. Sunak can show them how.
