Rishi Sunak mounted a last ditch attempt to win round voters and dismiss the “declinist” narrative surrounding the UK yesterday as the general election campaign heads into its final few days.
The Prime Minister is hoping Sir Keir Starmer falls at the final hurdle this week as both parties embark on the last push before polling day on Thursday, July 4.
Starmer’s Labour party is expected to sweep to victory, with a poll by JL Partners projecting Labour could win 450 seats at the election, giving them 32 more than in the 1997 landslide won by Tony Blair.
Sunak came out fighting with a defiant attitude over the weekend, telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg the UK “is a better place to live than it was in 2010”.
While he admitted recent years have been “difficult for everyone”, Sunak insisted the “declinist narrative people have of the UK” was “entirely wrong”.
Asked if he thought he would still be in No10 on July 5, he said: “Yes. I’m fighting very hard and I think people are waking up to the real danger of what a Labour government means.”
The Conservatives have pointed to the new energy price cap – down by £122 – which takes effect today, as well as warning “Labour’s energy policy will be a triple whammy” and against “gifting” the party “an unaccountable majority”.
But hitting back, Labour’s shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth branded his comments “excruciating” and accused the Prime Minister of “gloss[ing] over the concerns of ordinary working people”.
In their own bid to reach the winning post today, Labour launched hundreds of posters across the UK, warning voters of “the risk of waking up to five more years of Conservative government”.
Campaign chief Pat McFadden stressed: “If people don’t want to wake up on 5 July to five more years of economic chaos, wake up knowing that all the future offers are the same as the recent Tory past, then they have to vote Labour and vote for change on Thursday.”
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves also outlined Labour’s plans for a green belt house building blitz to spark growth, in a joint interview with Sir Keir in the Sunday Times.
She stressed that Labour “know there are different types of green belt land. Just because something’s designated ‘green belt’ does not mean it’s green.”
While Starmer – who has pledged to build 1.5m new homes over the next Parliament, if elected – insisted he wanted to “make sure we make a start on this on day one”.
According to betting aggregator Oddschecker, Labour are on 1/41 to win the most seats, and 1/25 to form the government – versus the Tories’ 125/1 to get the largest overall majority.