LONDON, July 23, (AP): Rishi Sunak has covered thousands of miles in the past few weeks, but he hasn’t outrun the expectation that his time as Britain’s prime minister is in its final hours.
United Kingdom voters will cast ballots in a national election Thursday, passing judgment on Sunak’s 20 months in office, and on the four Conservative prime ministers before him. They are widely expected to do something they have not done since 2005: Elect a Labour Party government.
During a hectic final two days of campaigning that saw him visit a food distribution warehouse, a supermarket, a farm and more, Sunak insisted "the outcome of this election is not a foregone conclusion.”
"People can see that we have turned a corner,” said the Conservative leader, who has been in office since October 2022. "It has been a difficult few years, but undeniably things are in a better place now than they were.”
But even a last-minute pep talk at a Conservative rally Tuesday night by former prime minister Boris Johnson - who led the party to a thumping election victory in 2019 - did little to lift the party's mood. Conservative Cabinet minister Mel Stride said Wednesday it looked like Labour was heading for an "extraordinary landslide."
Labour warned against taking the election result for granted, imploring supporters not to grow complacent about polls that have given the party a solid double-digit lead since before the campaign began. Labour leader Keir Starmer has spent the six-week campaign urging voters to take a chance on his center-left party and vote for change. Most people, including analysts and politicians, expect they will.
Labour has not set pulses racing with its pledges to get the sluggish economy growing, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a "clean energy superpower.”
But nothing has really gone wrong, either. The party has won the support of large chunks of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times.
Former Labour candidate Douglas Beattie, author of the book "How Labour Wins (and Why it Loses),” said Starmer’s "quiet stability probably chimes with the mood of the country right now.”