The Conservative campaign, as Rishi Sunak said several times in his BBC interview last night, “is about the future”. Spoiler alert: no one needs a soothsayer to predict that. The only question is the size of Labour’s majority and scale of the Tory wipe-out. So the Conservative campaign is switching rapidly into defensive mode, reinforcing formerly safe seats with visits from senior ministers, as the prospect of falling below 200 seats in Parliament haunts despairing tacticians.
Both Sunak and a Conservative social media onslaught this week are tacitly acknowledging the wooden spoon prize on July 4 is to limit the size of the Starmer majority and the impact of Nigel Farage’s Reform. A vote for anyone who’s not a Conservative candidate is just making it more likely that Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister, was Sunak’s thrust last night — a “poison pill” argument.
