Rishi Sunak said this week he’s putting U.K. defense spending on a "war footing.” He might as well have been talking about his own position.
Allies of the British prime minister described the last few days as him entering campaign mode for a general election he must call by the end of January. A plan to tighten rules for welfare payments, ramming his flagship policy to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda through Parliament and a pledge to spend 2.5% of gross domestic product on defense by 2030 all secured newspaper front-page coverage.
There’s even been intense speculation, which Downing Street is trying to play down, that Sunak is preparing to announce the date for a national vote early next week as he tries to seize the political agenda. On Friday afternoon, journalists, MPs and civil servants were frantically texting each other to exchange clues showing that an announcement was — or was not — imminent.