Rishi Sunak's final call before the UK election

London:

Ending Labour’s “supermajority” is the final message British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to send on Wednesday, the last day of campaigning before Thursday’s poll, when most of the Conservative incumbents appear to have all but conceded defeat in the general election.

“This is what unites us. We must stop the Labour supermajority that will raise your taxes. The only way to do that is to vote Conservative tomorrow,” Rishi Sunak, 44, said on social media as he struggled to rally support in the final hours of the election campaign.

With his party lagging far behind Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the strategy of the Indian-British leader and his team appears to be to canvass their traditional voters to ensure a strong enough turnout in Thursday’s election to narrow the gap on their widely expected defeat after the Conservatives’ victories in the last three elections.

“I absolutely agree that the polls indicate that tomorrow we will probably see the biggest landslide majority for the Labour Party – the biggest majority this country has ever seen. Much bigger than in 1997,” Mel Stride, Rishi Sunak’s work and pensions secretary, told the BBC.

“I have accepted that where the polls are at the moment… we are very likely to find ourselves tomorrow in a situation where (Labour) will have the largest majority ever won by any party,” he said, effectively conceding defeat.

This is seen as a scare tactic aimed at provoking Conservative voters into action, in the hope of maintaining Labour’s majority below that won by former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997, with 179 seats.

“Thursday’s vote is now about building a strong enough opposition. We need to understand the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and the frustration of the opposition,” Suella Braverman, who was sacked as Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak, told the Telegraph.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Boris Johnson – who has not exactly been a close ally of Rishi Sunak since the Partygate scandal over parties breaking the law over the COVID pandemic – was also used by the party at a campaign event in London to warn of a “brutal majority” given to Labour under Keir Starmer.

“When Rishi asked me to come and help him, I obviously couldn’t refuse. We’re all here because we love our country,” Boris Johnson told a cheering Conservative crowd.

“They can’t achieve anything in this election except deliver the most left-wing Labour government since the war, with a huge majority, and we must not let that happen,” he warned.

The Labour Party, for its part, is keen to move beyond this message of a foregone conclusion on the eve of the election, in order to combat any complacency within its ranks and among its own electoral base.

“People say polls predict the future, but they don’t predict the future, every vote counts, every vote has to be earned… This is not ‘job done’,” Keir Starmer said.

Pollsters are predicting a low turnout, which was 67% in the last general election in December 2019, when Boris Johnson won a solid majority on the back of his “get Brexit done” message.

On Thursday, polls will open across the country at 7am local time and close at 10pm local time as voters elect MPs for the UK’s 650 constituencies – 326 needed to secure a majority and avoid a hung parliament.

All eyes will then turn to the exit poll at 10pm, which will give a fairly accurate picture of what to expect nationally as counting begins and focuses across the UK. If opinion polls are to be believed, the Conservative incumbents are on course to win between 53 and 150 seats, with Labour projected to come out on top.

(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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