Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopped from from stop to stop along the campaign trail as he embarked on a desperate scramble to hold onto safe Tory seats ahead of the General Election
Rishi Sunak has embarked on a desperate scramble to hold onto safe Tory seats ahead of the General Election.
The PM, who had barely four hours sleep and was “energised” on three breakfasts, insisted he was focused on “winning an election on Thursday” and that he “will keep going fighting for every vote”. Yet he spent the last two days touring constituencies where the Tories won majorities of up to 26,000.
The targeting of safe seats indicates just how dire the Conservatives’ prospects are – with several senior Cabinet ministers at risk of losing their seats. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who is fighting to be re-elected in Godalming and Ash, told the BBC he is telling his kids: “Daddy might not be Chancellor, he may not be an MP after the election.”
The PM began his final dash around the country on Monday at a medical centre in Stoke-on-Trent South, where the Tories last won a majority of 11,271, followed by a gin distillery in Stratford-on-Avon, where they won a 19,972 majority. Later in the day he visited a cricket ground in Nuneaton, where the majority was 13,144, and an evening rally in Hinckley and Bosworth, where the party had won a majority of 26,278.
On Tuesday the PM stopped off at a Morrisons in Witney, David Cameron’s former seat which the Tories won by 15,177 votes in 2019, and a distribution centre and farm in Banbury, where the Tory majority was 16,813.
A 5am trip to an Ocado centre in Mid Bedfordshire, which the Tories lost to Labour in a by-election last year, was the only exception to the safe seat pattern. Some of the constituencies have seen their boundaries change ahead of the upcoming election.
Mr Sunak was told earlier on Tuesday there’s “more chance of lightning striking twice in the same place” than his remaining PM after the General Election. The doomed Tory leader was read the piece of analysis by the elections guru Professor John Curtice in a BBC Breakfast interview.
Asked whether he accepted the fate, the PM replied: “That’s his view. That’s not going to stop me from working as hard as I can over these final few days to talk to as many people as possible about the choice.” Mr Sunak was later confronted about being given a “poisoned chalice” after the tenures of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.
The PM admitted “you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt”, adding: “No point sitting there going: ‘Well, I wish that someone had given me four aces or whatever.’
“You’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt. It’s a great privilege to do this job. Has it been tough? Of course it’s been tough. I got made Chancellor, had to do a budget in three weeks and then a pandemic hit.”
It comes as more than six in 10 people think “nothing works anymore” in Britain, according to polling. Research by the New Britain Project reveals 61% of people hold the view, up from 58% from last year, despite Mr Sunak insisting his plan to fix the country is working. Some 65% of the public also believe the social contract between the Government and people in Britain is broken – up from 62% last year.
