A government minister and former government minister ostracised from the Prime Minister’s circle for, apparently, being too Conservative both appear to concede the election is lost, just 24 hours before polls open on Thursday.
Mel Stride, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions did the media rounds on Wednesday morning — the final day of campaigning for the United Kingdom’s snap election unexpectedly called by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — and admitted their Conservative Party faces total defeat.
While that has been obvious to the public for a long time — quite apart from the widespread disillusionment in the Conservatives for their wholesale betrayal of their own voters, the pollsters have consistently put Labour well ahead for many months — the change in rhetoric from the governing party at the last minute is striking.
Stride spoke to several broadcasters repeating a broadly identical message. One of those was BBC Radio 4, who he told: “I have accepted that where the polls are at the moment – and it seems highly unlikely that they are very, very wrong, because they’ve been consistently in the same place for some time – that we are therefore tomorrow highly likely to be in a situation where we have the largest majority that any party has ever achieved.”
He told Times Radio: “I totally accept that where the polls are at the moment means that tomorrow is likely to see the largest Labour landslide majority this country has ever seen – much bigger than 1997, bigger even than the National Government of 1931.”
Stride made a last-ditch plea to voters to please not support Nigel Farage’s Reform but to instead back the Conservatives to save them from oblivion. He said the country had to have effective opposition inside Parliament to hold the anticipated Labour government to account. While it is true the Parliamentary democracy system needs an opposition as a balance on the government, it is no longer by any means clear why the Conservatives are worthy of the role.
Farage’s Reform UK, for instance, has been pitching hard to assume the leadership role on the right of British politics.
Another top Conservative Party figure calling on colleagues to acknowledge the very obvious defeat coming is Suella Braverman, who wrote in the Daily Telegraph overnight to remind her own party it had miserably failed on the things that mattered to its own voters the most, and that the wages of these sins is inevitably death.
She stated: (Daily Telegraph)
we failed to cut immigration or tax, or deal with the net zero and woke policies we have presided over for 14 years. If our best defence is whining that the Left took over the institutions, who negligently let them? There’s a reason why insincere posturing isn’t fooling anyone now, and it’s our record in office.
… I don’t agree with Mr Farage on everything, but we Tories need to reflect honestly and with humility to ask ourselves how a start-up party, with very little infrastructure, has galvanised the electorate and lured so many of our lifelong supporters? The Reform phenomenon was predictable, avoidable and is entirely our own fault.
The admissions of defeat came as former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise last-minute campaign speech for the Prime Minister on Tuesday night. While this immediately exposed just how incredible divided the Conservative Party continues to be even as it stares actual death in the face — Boris making a speech triggered an actual present serving Conservative cabinet minister to question whether he’d bother voting for his own party at all on Thursday — it was also an opportunity for some fun-poking.
Never mind the optics of the last-ditch campaign rally at a military museum underneath a mid-air-suspended helicopter giving a very Fall of Saigon aesthetic, it also opened the door for Reform UK to jibe at the Tories drawing a crowd of 150 (they claimed) for their last big event, while Nigel Farage pulled 5,000 on Sunday.