Sunak and Starmer hammer home key messages ahead of poll

With just three days left in the general election campaign, the fate of Britain’s leading politicians will be in the hands of voters.

This is not a moment when the scope of the campaign is suddenly widening. Rather, it is narrowing as the parties – particularly the two main ones – focus on the key messages that they hope will appeal to the crucial slices of British public opinion they need to win.

If you hear Rishi Sunak or Sir Keir Starmer say something today, expect to hear them say it tomorrow and Wednesday too. This is not the time for variation but for repetition.

So what are these messages? Well, Mr Sunak thinks he will still be prime minister by the end of the week. At least that’s what he told Laura Kuenssberg yesterday.

But if we look at the Conservative campaign as it enters its final stretch, we see that it is undeniably hunkered down in a defensive posture.

It is hard to believe that when Prime Minister Sunak entered the rainy Downing Street 40 days ago to announce this general election, he expected to spend the last three days of the campaign warning of a Labour victory so large that Sir Keir could wield power “unchecked”.

Whatever they say publicly, the way the Conservatives are approaching the week shows that they believe the dire opinion polls are at least plausible.

Campaigning in the Midlands today, Mr Sunak warns that, whatever Nigel Farage says, Reform UK cannot hope to be the real opposition because they “simply won’t win enough votes to challenge Labour”.

He should say: ‘Imagine this: hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs opposed to one, two, three, four, five elected Reform MPs.’

Note that this argument assumes that there will be hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs.

This hypothesis reflects the complex multi-directional struggle that the Conservatives are currently facing: they are trying to prevent voters from turning to Labour, but they are also using different arguments to prevent other former Conservatives from turning to the Reform Party and, in other parts of the country, the Liberal Democrats.

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The controversies surrounding the candidates in recent days, together with Mr Farage’s claim that the West “provoked” the war in Ukraine, have at least given the Conservatives something they struggled to find earlier in the campaign: a means of attacking Reform UK.

Some Conservative candidates would have liked to do it earlier.

This is the public debate that is taking place within the Conservative Party in the next three days. Then there is another debate, which goes from the semi-public to the private. What happens next?

In today’s Telegraph, Jesse Norman, a former minister seeking re-election, wrote an 813-word article on the election.

Not the general election, which he appears to concede to Labour in his first sentence, but the Conservative leadership election which he said would follow.

Mr Norman is considering reducing the role of Conservative Party members and not rushing into a leadership election.

Some of Mr Norman’s colleagues are focusing less on the process and more on the candidates – although that will depend on who remains in parliament on July 5.

And the Labour Party?

In one respect, Labour’s task is simpler. In England at least, it is fighting in only one direction: trying to win over former Conservative voters (although there are some very quiet concerns about the Reform Party’s possible strengths in some Labour seats, notably in South Yorkshire).

Labour campaigners are relieved and happy to have come through the campaign with one consistent message: change.

Note that in recent days, however, the message has been adapted to warn voters that if they want change, “you have to vote for it.”

This betrays more than a glimmer of concern that some potential Labour voters might take the result for granted and therefore stay home or vote for another party.

The approach taken by the majority, however, is optimistic. It is enough to note that Sir Keir launched his campaign today in Hitchin, an area of Hertfordshire that had not had a Labour MP for six years, before Mr Sunak was born.

The Labour Party is also having its own semi-public, semi-private debate. In public, it continues to claim, as Jon Ashworth did this morning, that the Conservatives could win the general election.

Privately, Labour circles are abuzz with talk of the government’s preparations.

It is the home of Sue Gray, the chief of staff whom Sir Keir poached last year after a lifetime in public service. After 14 years in opposition, few senior members of the Labour Party, whether MPs or civil servants, have experience of government – a key reason why Sir Keir hired Ms Gray.

Interestingly, if Labour wins, Ms Gray is likely to be joined in Downing Street by Morgan McSweeney, who led the party’s election campaign.

In that case, a potential Labour government can be expected to quickly claim that what it has found in the government’s books is worse than it expected – an argument that the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has preemptively questioned.

Labour strategists believe that David Cameron played a major role in securing the Conservatives’ 2015 election victory, in the days after he became prime minister in 2010, when he used the trappings of his office to launch a concerted attack on Labour’s record. More of the same can be expected.

Of course, Labour may not succeed. So far, only postal votes have been taken.

But make no mistake: given the way both major parties have been campaigning in recent days, they both believe this is the most likely scenario.