A senior ally of Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, indicates that Labour is on the brink of securing the largest “landslide majority” in UK history. The remarks were made by Mel Stride, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who has come to terms with the imminent defeat for the Conservatives in the upcoming general election on Thursday.
The wide-scale dominance of Labour is predicted in recent poll results. YouGov’s survey for Sky News forecasts a substantial majority of 212 seats for Labour, the largest majority garnered by any party since 1832. The poll released on Wednesday night indicates Labour could secure 431 seats, far surpassing the Conservatives’ 102 and the Liberal Democrats’ 72 seats.
Adding to Sunak’s escalating woes, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper has switched its allegiances, extending its support to the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. The paper endorsed Starmer as the country’s much-needed “new manager”. The Sun praised Starmer for steering his party back to the centrist politics synonymous with Tony Blair’s era, earning him the privilege of leading the nation. The paper also reported that Conservatives are suffering from political fatigue.
This Wednesday, Stride’s gloomy prediction about a Labour victory is seen as a tactic to rally undecided Conservative voters or possibly discourage Labour supporters from voting. This was labeled as “voter suppression” by Starmer, who spent the final campaigning day touring Wales, Scotland, and England, challenging Stride’s notion of dissuading people from exercising their right to vote.
Starmer, speaking in Carmarthenshire, stressed the importance of voting for a change and expressed his careful optimisms about the electoral battlegrounds across the UK.
Notably, Sunak denied his colleague’s defeatist tone while speaking on ITV’s This Morning, insisting he still fought for every vote and rejecting any assumptions of the election’s outcome being predetermined.
However, Sunak’s efforts were undermined when Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary, asserted in the Daily Telegraph that the election was effectively “over”, laying significant blame on the Prime Minister.
The Conservative party’s recent shift in campaign strategy, which aimed to warn of a predicted Labour “supermajority”, has failed to resonate significantly with the broad span of Conservative voters and has resulted in a drop in the party activists’ spirits.
Survey data provided by Ipsos in collaboration with the Financial Times (FT) and published on a Tuesday, revealed only one-fourth of those voicing their support for the Conservative party were doing so to prevent a substantial victory for Labour.
The dwindling Tory vote throughout the country indicates around 120 constituencies where the victorious edge is forecasted to be less than 5 percentage points, as per the approximation model of the FT.
A selection of voters could potentially dictate whether the Tories secure as many as 146 seats in Parliament or as few as 44. According to the FT’s election poll tracker, Labour currently sits comfortably ahead of the Conservative party by an average of 19.5 points.
During a Tuesday evening gathering, ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a spur-of-the-moment incursion into the campaign, exhorting the unsteady Tory supporters to maintain their allegiance with the party. “We cannot passively watch as a Labour administration prepares to exercise a crushing majority to wipe out so much of what we have accomplished,” he implored.
The following day, Mr Starmer expressed a complete lack of concern over Johnson’s reappearance in the political scene. “To bring out the person who epitomises the chaos and division we’ve spent six weeks arguing about, with just 24 hours to spare, thoroughly supports the case I’ve been presenting,” stated Starmer.
Following Johnson’s tenure as prime minister, marred by numerous controversies and ending in the known unauthorised gatherings at Downing Street during the Covid restrictions, he was expelled by his own MPs.
While addressing a recent attack made by the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on western countries for allegedly instigating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s complete invasion of Ukraine, Johnson accused other political parties of being “packed with Kremlin apologists who actually provide excuses for Putin’s 2022 onslaught.”
Although it is projected that Reform might divide the right-wing vote and possibly rob the Tories of numerous seats, the populist party’s campaign has recently been embroiled in a scandal after multiple allegations of racist, homophobic and sexist comments made by activists and candidates came to light. – The Financial Times Limited 2024 Copyright.
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