UK

Sunak says he will stay on as MP even if Tories lose, as party leaders hit the home straight

Britain goes to the polls on Thursday in election that Labour is expected to win in a landslide

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey taking part in a bungee jump during a visit to Eastbourne Borough football club in East Sussex while on the general election campaign trail. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

Mark Paul London Correspondent
Mon Jul 1 2024 - 19:43

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has insisted “it’s not over until it’s over” ahead of the general election on Thursday, which Labour is widely predicted to win in a landslide. He also suggested he would be prepared to stay on as leader of the Conservative party for an interim period if it loses.

Mr Sunak also confirmed he would stay on as an MP for Richmond and Northallerton if the Tories lose the election. “I love my constituents. I love serving them,” he said in an interview with BBC, while insisting his party could still win despite being close to 20 points behind Labour in most polls.

When asked directly if he would stay on as leader of the party if it loses to steady the ship while it conducted a postmortem and decide its future direction, he suggested he would: “I’ll always put myself at the service of [the party].”

The three main party leaders were all prominent on the campaign trail on Monday as their campaigns homed in on their core messages to voters as polling day neared.

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Mr Sunak visited a pharmaceuticals warehouse in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire in the midlands, where it is facing a challenge from Labour and also Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. While engaged in a question-and-answer session with workers he repeatedly warned that Labour would raise people’s taxes, which has been a central theme of the Tory campaign.

British prime minister Rishi Sunak playing cricket during a visit to Nuneaton cricket club as he campaigned in the midlands. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/pool/Getty Images

Labour has denied it is planning to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance, but has left itself wiggle room on forms of tax such as capital gains tax, although it insists its fiscal plans can be fuelled by economic growth alone and not tax hikes.

Mr Sunak also lashed out at Reform, which is riding at between 16 per cent and 19 per cent in most polls and threatens to cost the Conservatives scores of seats by splitting the right wing vote. A Reform campaigner in Mr Farage’s Clacton constituency was last week secretly filmed by Channel 4 denouncing the prime minister, whose parents are Indian, using a racial slur.

“Reform candidates openly espouse racist and misogynistic views without challenge. I think that tells you something about the culture within that party,” Mr Sunak told BBC. Reform says it rejects racism and is “weeding out” members with unsavoury views, although it also claimed the racist Clacton campaigner was an actor, which Channel 4 has denied.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Keir Starmer said on Monday that he would be prepared to work with Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally movement if it wins control of the French government. “I will work with any government in Europe and across the world if we are elected in to serve the country,” said the Labour leader.

His party intends to seek a better post-Brexit trade deal with the EU if it wins the election, although it has not said what it would offer the bloc in return for better terms. He said he did not think the potential elevation of Ms Le Pen’s Eurosceptic bloc would affect Britain’s chances of negotiating a better Brexit deal.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey continued his campaign of publicity stunts with a bungee jump from a crane in Sussex in the morning. He spent the afternoon zumba dancing in Wokingham, just west of London, before moving on to the South Cotswolds in an affluent part of southwest England, where he was pulled around a lake by a speedboat.

The Lib Dems are on course to retake their old position as the third largest party in Westminster, and could win more than 60 seats, some polls suggest. It won just 11 seats at the 2019 election.

Mark Paul

Mark Paul

Mark Paul is London Correspondent for The Irish Times

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