In final days before the UK election, defiant Sunak insists he can stay in power
- Polls show Labour heading for a landslide victory and its leader Keir Starmer on track to become prime minister
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Sunday dismissed suggestions that his party was headed to defeat in the July 4 general election, using one of his final televised appearances to defend the Conservatives’ record on the economy.
Sunak told the BBC that he believed he would still be in power by the end of the week, despite opinion polls that have found the Conservatives trailing far behind the opposition Labour Party of Keir Starmer.
“It’s entirely wrong, this kind of declinist narrative that people have of the UK. I wholeheartedly reject,” he said. “It [the UK] is a better place to live than it was in 2010.’’
After 14 years of Conservative-led governments, many voters blame the party for Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, long waiting lists for healthcare, high levels of immigration and the dislocations caused by Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Sunak, who became prime minister in October 2022, has tried to silence his critics by arguing that his policies have begun to solve those problems and warning that Starmer, the Labour leader, would raise taxes if his party wins the election.
But polls since Friday morning make depressing reading for the Conservatives. While support for Labour slipped below 40 per cent in two surveys, the Tories remained stuck at around 21 per cent.
That puts Starmer on track to enter Downing Street on July 5 with a majority bigger than Labour’s Tony Blair won in 1997.
Bloomberg’s UK poll of polls, a rolling 14-day average using data from 11 polling companies stretching back to January 2021, shows Labour leading the Conservatives by 21 percentage points.
So-called MRP modelling, based on larger surveys, on average suggest Labour is on course for 450 seats in the 650-member House of Commons, with the Conservatives reduced to around 100 – less than a third of their tally at the 2019 general election.
Sunak’s party has been hit in recent days by allegations that Conservative candidates and officials knew about the date of the election before Sunak made it public late last month, and then used the information to place a bet.
The Metropolitan Police is investigating a “small number” of wagers. A Labour candidate was suspended for betting on himself to lose the seat he was contesting.
Labour insists there’s no room for complacency about the election, with polls showing around 10 per cent of voters are undecided. Many of them backed the Tories in 2019. For Labour, the fear is that would-be supporters will stay at home if they think the party is heading for landslide.
“I’m assuming nothing about the result on Thursday,” Pat McFadden, Labour’s election coordinator, said in an interview with Sky News. “I think Labour has a chance, has a good possibility this time. But change will only come if people vote for it.”
A sobering fact for both parties is that their combined share of the vote has slipped to just over 60 per cent from around 80 per cent three years ago, suggesting voters aren’t enthused by the two traditional parties of power.
They’ve lost support to smaller parties, notably Nigel Farage’s populist anti-immigration Reform UK, which is polling around 16 per cent and projected by MRP polls to win a handful of seats in Parliament.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Starmer warned that a failure to address the disillusionment in British politics could lead to a rise in the hard right, as seen in France and other European nations.
Pledging “deeds, not words” to stave off the threat in Britain, he said: “it’s based on this disaffection, this sense that politics cannot be a force for good and you can’t trust politicians”.
Associated Press and Bloomberg
