Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Conservative Party, and the MP for Richmond (Yorks).
We Conservatives have urgent work to do.
Just 130,000 votes can stop Labour from winning a supermajority.
So, we must redouble our efforts in these final days and deliver the strongest Conservative voice in the next parliament. I know how tirelessly you have campaigned these past 5 weeks, and how hard so many of you worked ahead of the local elections in May but I must ask you for one more effort because the stakes are so high. We are fighting for the future of our country and every door we knock on, every leaflet we deliver and every call we make will make a difference.
A huge number of seats in this election will be decided by just hundreds of votes. So every vote we move will have an impact and make it more likely that your Conservative candidate is returned to parliament so that they can be your voice, represent your values, and stand up for you.
Just imagine if the polls were right and Keir Starmer and Labour won that supermajority. They would instantly set about entrenching themselves in power. They would rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to stay in office and harder for anyone to replace them. We could find ourselves with a Labour government not just for five years, but for ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years.
And this would be a Labour government that wouldn’t have to worry about the House of Commons because it would have a massive majority. There wouldn’t be the people there to hold them to account.
We already know that they want to lower the voting age to 16. They don’t want to do that because they think they are adults, but because they think they will vote for them. What other changes will they make to make it harder to remove them from power?
Votes for EU nationals? Votes for prisoners? A whole new voting system designed to allow politicians to stitch things up behind closed doors and shut you out?
We must not let them do that. We must not surrender to Labour. We must fight for every vote.
This responsibility falls to us, the Conservatives, because no other party can stand up to Labour.
The Liberal Democrats won’t as they agree with Labour. Their only issue with Keir Starmer is that he doesn’t go far enough when it comes to reversing Brexit, erasing the definition of sex, and changing who can vote. The Liberal Democrats are explicit that they want EU nationals to have the vote, to allow self-ID, and to rejoin the single market. Every Liberal Democrat MP who is elected will strengthen the support for these flawed positions in parliament—which is why we must hold the line in the coming days.
Reform can’t stand up to Labour because, whether you think it is fair or not, they just won’t win enough seats to oppose Labour. Their deputy leader has said that it would be great for them to get “one, two, three, four five elected MPs”. Just imagine that: Hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs opposed by just “one, two, three, four five elected MPs”.
So, we Conservatives must rise to this challenge. We must show the qualities that have made us the most successful, the most durable political party in the democratic world.
We’re not going to surrender to Labour. We can’t surrender this country’s future to a tax-raising Labour party, and Conservatives can’t surrender to a generation of Labour rule. So, we must make our case. We must make people realise that this is not a by-election but a vote which will have huge consequences and that if you vote for anyone other than the Conservatives this week, you could find yourself with a Labour government for a generation. Ask your friends, ask your neighbours: can you afford to pay more than £2,000 more in tax? Because that is what they will be paying if Keir Starmer walks into Downing Street on Friday.
We must not let Britain sleepwalk into an unchecked Labour government. It is our job, our duty in the coming days to wake people up to this danger.
Now, I understand why people have their doubts about offering us their support again. I am not blind to people’s frustration with our party, with me. I get it. The last few years have been tough. Covid and the energy price spike caused by the war in Ukraine have been difficult, and we have not got everything right. We have made mistakes. We have not delivered as much as we hoped to.
But a vote for the Conservatives in this election is a vote for lower taxes, controlled immigration, greater energy security, and a stronger national defence. Yes, we had to make difficult decisions because of the support we offered people during the pandemic and with their energy bills, but we are now cutting taxes and have a clear plan to cut taxes for people at every stage of their lives.
So when you are talking to an undecided voter on the doorstep, ask them to think what a Labour government would mean. Think what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner would do with the power they are asking you to give them.
There is a reason why Labour won’t be straight with people about what they are going to do: they know that if they were frank about what they were going to do, people wouldn’t support it.
All their evasions tell you is that they are going to whack up council tax and a bunch of other taxes because Labour always run out of other’s people’s money. And one thing we know about Keir Starmer is that he has no problem going back on his promises. His career is a story of commitments dropped as soon as they became too difficult to keep.
We need to get across that once you have handed Keir Starmer and the Labour Party a blank cheque, you won’t be able to get it back.
A Labour government would be bad for our country, and an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover. Between now and Thursday, we have got to get the message out to people that we Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, and your values represented.
Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Conservative Party, and the MP for Richmond (Yorks).
We Conservatives have urgent work to do.
Just 130,000 votes can stop Labour from winning a supermajority.
So, we must redouble our efforts in these final days and deliver the strongest Conservative voice in the next parliament. I know how tirelessly you have campaigned these past 5 weeks, and how hard so many of you worked ahead of the local elections in May but I must ask you for one more effort because the stakes are so high. We are fighting for the future of our country and every door we knock on, every leaflet we deliver and every call we make will make a difference.
A huge number of seats in this election will be decided by just hundreds of votes. So every vote we move will have an impact and make it more likely that your Conservative candidate is returned to parliament so that they can be your voice, represent your values, and stand up for you.
Just imagine if the polls were right and Keir Starmer and Labour won that supermajority. They would instantly set about entrenching themselves in power. They would rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to stay in office and harder for anyone to replace them. We could find ourselves with a Labour government not just for five years, but for ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years.
And this would be a Labour government that wouldn’t have to worry about the House of Commons because it would have a massive majority. There wouldn’t be the people there to hold them to account.
We already know that they want to lower the voting age to 16. They don’t want to do that because they think they are adults, but because they think they will vote for them. What other changes will they make to make it harder to remove them from power?
Votes for EU nationals? Votes for prisoners? A whole new voting system designed to allow politicians to stitch things up behind closed doors and shut you out?
We must not let them do that. We must not surrender to Labour. We must fight for every vote.
This responsibility falls to us, the Conservatives, because no other party can stand up to Labour.
The Liberal Democrats won’t as they agree with Labour. Their only issue with Keir Starmer is that he doesn’t go far enough when it comes to reversing Brexit, erasing the definition of sex, and changing who can vote. The Liberal Democrats are explicit that they want EU nationals to have the vote, to allow self-ID, and to rejoin the single market. Every Liberal Democrat MP who is elected will strengthen the support for these flawed positions in parliament—which is why we must hold the line in the coming days.
Reform can’t stand up to Labour because, whether you think it is fair or not, they just won’t win enough seats to oppose Labour. Their deputy leader has said that it would be great for them to get “one, two, three, four five elected MPs”. Just imagine that: Hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs opposed by just “one, two, three, four five elected MPs”.
So, we Conservatives must rise to this challenge. We must show the qualities that have made us the most successful, the most durable political party in the democratic world.
We’re not going to surrender to Labour. We can’t surrender this country’s future to a tax-raising Labour party, and Conservatives can’t surrender to a generation of Labour rule. So, we must make our case. We must make people realise that this is not a by-election but a vote which will have huge consequences and that if you vote for anyone other than the Conservatives this week, you could find yourself with a Labour government for a generation. Ask your friends, ask your neighbours: can you afford to pay more than £2,000 more in tax? Because that is what they will be paying if Keir Starmer walks into Downing Street on Friday.
We must not let Britain sleepwalk into an unchecked Labour government. It is our job, our duty in the coming days to wake people up to this danger.
Now, I understand why people have their doubts about offering us their support again. I am not blind to people’s frustration with our party, with me. I get it. The last few years have been tough. Covid and the energy price spike caused by the war in Ukraine have been difficult, and we have not got everything right. We have made mistakes. We have not delivered as much as we hoped to.
But a vote for the Conservatives in this election is a vote for lower taxes, controlled immigration, greater energy security, and a stronger national defence. Yes, we had to make difficult decisions because of the support we offered people during the pandemic and with their energy bills, but we are now cutting taxes and have a clear plan to cut taxes for people at every stage of their lives.
So when you are talking to an undecided voter on the doorstep, ask them to think what a Labour government would mean. Think what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner would do with the power they are asking you to give them.
There is a reason why Labour won’t be straight with people about what they are going to do: they know that if they were frank about what they were going to do, people wouldn’t support it.
All their evasions tell you is that they are going to whack up council tax and a bunch of other taxes because Labour always run out of other’s people’s money. And one thing we know about Keir Starmer is that he has no problem going back on his promises. His career is a story of commitments dropped as soon as they became too difficult to keep.
We need to get across that once you have handed Keir Starmer and the Labour Party a blank cheque, you won’t be able to get it back.
A Labour government would be bad for our country, and an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover. Between now and Thursday, we have got to get the message out to people that we Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, and your values represented.