Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged Conservative voters defecting to Reform UK to stick by him, warning that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour would take “no action” on their concerns about immigration or net zero.
The Prime Minister was grilled on a radio phone-in by one voter who said he had voted for the Tories since Margaret Thatcher’s first victory in 1979 but was now supporting the Nigel Farage-backed party, which is polling in double digits in opinion polls.
Mr Sunak pointed to his plan to deport migrants coming on small boats to Rwanda, and his action in diluting climate change policies designed to achieve net zero emissions because of their economic costs.
“Those are the issues that you care about, I care about them too. I've already shown I’m delivering on them,” he told the caller on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show.
“And if you vote for Reform, all you're going to do is put Keir Starmer in power and then we're going to get no action on those things that you care about: migration is not going to come down, the boats will not be stopped, and he will adopt an ideological approach to net zero, reverse the changes I've made.
“It’s going to cost you and everyone else. You don't need to even believe me - just look at what Sadiq Khan’s trying to do in London with Ulez, [that] should give you all the evidence that you need.”
Labour has diluted its green investment plans, citing the weak state of the economy under the Tories, but says it remains committed to achieving net zero.
It says its own plan to tackle illegal immigration - working more closely with European partners and on law enforcement - would be more effective than Mr Sunak’s Rwanda “gimmick”, and stresses that Channel boat crossings are at a record high.
Mr Ferrari pressed the PM on when the General Election will come this year. Mr Sunak responded that he was “keen to make progress” first on his five priorities including economic growth and cutting NHS waiting lists.
“I said at the beginning of this year very clearly that my working assumption was that we would have an election in the second half of this year,” he recapped.
“And beyond the timing of that, I really think it's important to focus on the substance and the choices I just mentioned.”
