Rishi Sunak has Farage in his sights

Rishi Sunak will mock Nigel Farage’s goal of becoming the opposition to Keir Starmer as he urges undecided voters to vote Tory to stop Labour winning a ‘supermajority’.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a visit to a bakery during a campaign event in Golders Green, north London, on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Rishi Sunak will mock Nigel Farage’s goal of becoming the opposition to Sir Keir Starmer as he urges undecided voters to vote Tory to stop Labour winning a “supermajority”.

The British Prime Minister was expected to turn his fire on the Reform UK leader overnight on Monday after Mr Farage used the biggest rally yet of the election campaign to attack “slippery Sunak” and say that Sir Keir ­offered only “a change of middle management”.

In a speech acknowledging that Sir Keir is heading for victory in Thursday’s general election, Mr Sunak warns disaffected Conservative voters that “unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover”.

With the Conservatives and Reform locked in a fight for millions of disillusioned voters undecided about whether to stick with the Tories, Mr Farage insisted on Sunday that “they could come to us over the course of the next four days” as he looked to set himself up as “the real voice of opposition” to a Labour government.

Reform “just won’t win enough seats to oppose Labour”, Mr Sunak will say as he points out that the party has previously suggested it would be a good ­result to get “one, two, three, four, five elected MPs” after Thursday’s vote.

“Just imagine that: hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs ­opposed by just ‘one, two, three, four, five elected MPs’,” Mr Sunak says in his speech.

“We Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, your values represented.”

The Conservatives insist they have not conceded defeat and Mr Sunak claimed on Sunday that he expected to be in No. 10 on Friday, saying he was “fighting very hard” to stay in office. But in the final days of campaigning he will attempt to use Labour’s big poll lead to warn voters who have deserted the Conservatives of the consequences if they do not return.

“If they get the kind of majority, the supermajority that the polls suggest, they will set about entrenching themselves in power,” Mr Sunak says in a warning about Labour’s plan to give the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds.

“I tell you this: once you have handed Keir Starmer and ­Labour a blank cheque, you won’t be able to get it back. A Labour government would be bad for our country and an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover.”

Labour will urge people not to take the result for granted as it spends the final days of the campaign insisting voters must back the party if they want to oust the Tories. “If people don’t want to wake up on July 5 to five more years of economic chaos, to wake up knowing that all the future offers is the same as the recent Tory past, then they have to vote Labour,” party campaign co-­ordinator Pat McFadden said.

Tory strategists believe warnings of a supermajority are persuading some voters to return to the Conservatives and polling suggests some will back the party primarily to limit Sir Keir’s power. Only 12 per cent of voters say they want a Conservative majority, significantly behind the 20 per cent planning to vote for the party, and only 70 per cent of those who say they intend to vote Tory say they want a Tory majority. About 11 per cent planning to vote Conservative say they want a Starmer-led ­administration, either as a majority or minority government.

Overall, 41 per cent of voters say they want a Labour majority, slightly ahead of the 37 per cent planning to vote Labour, suggesting an element of tactical voting for other parties to ­remove the Conservatives. Ninety per cent of those intending to vote Labour want a Starmer majority while the rest want a hung parliament or “some other result”. Nine per cent of those intending to vote Reform say they want a Tory majority and 11 per cent want a Labour majority.

Mr Farage said support for his party was “not a protest vote, even though there is much to protest against”. He told supporters in Birmingham the UK was a “country that is in cultural decline” and has “forgotten where we came from”.

The Times