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Rishi Sunak has refused to modify his campaigning style ahead of the UK general election on July 4, despite his party falling into third place behind Reform UK for the first time in a national opinion poll.
The UK prime minister faced recriminations from both rightwingers and centrists within the Conservative fold on Friday, as panic gripped Tory candidates in the wake of a YouGov survey showing Nigel Farage’s party had overtaken them in popularity.
Insisting he was only “halfway through this election” and “still fighting very hard for every vote”, Sunak vowed to double down on his campaign rather than change tack — as he vowed he would stay on in parliament for the next five years, whether as prime minister or an opposition MP.
Asked by reporters whether he was contemplating an overhaul of his campaigning style in the wake of the “crossover” opinion poll, he said: “No. We’re out and about and . . . it’s really good that both [Tory and Labour] manifestos are out now because it’s really clear what the choice is at the election.”
While taking a break from the domestic campaign trail to attend the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, he argued that voters “do understand that a vote for anyone who’s not a Conservative candidate is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in No 10”.
Other senior Tories also sought to put on a brave face on the party’s fortunes. City minister Bim Afolami told Sky News he was “not worried” about the opinion poll and ruled out any deal between the Conservatives and Reform.
Farage seized on the so-called “crossover” poll, however, telling a Westminster press conference that it rendered him “leader of the opposition” and the key rival for Labour in a number of seats including those in the ‘red wall’ in northern England.
“The inflection point means that if you vote Conservative in the red wall you will almost certainly get Labour. We are the challengers to Labour, we are the real opposition,” Farage said.
He insisted the party could carry out a “reverse takeover” of the Conservatives akin to the Reform party of Canada in 1993, stating the Tory “brand is done” and arguing that many would defect in the coming parliament amid internal division.
“I suspect my presence will help widen those splits and some of these people will be very welcome to come to us,” he said.
Farage conceded that his party’s “weakness” was it needed to raise “a lot of money very, very quickly”. He added: “That is something we are going to be focused on very heavily in the course of the next few days. We are the underdogs in every sense.”
While critics of Sunak on the Tory right have warned him for months that the would be vulnerable to Reform without more hardline Conservative policies on immigration, tax and cultural issues, some were still dumbfounded by the YouGov poll.
“It’s pretty shocking and bleak,” said one Tory official on the party’s right flank, who added: “I’m enjoying feeling vindicated but it would be nice if there were some Conservative party left at the end of this.”
Rightwingers are now urging Sunak to “roll the dice” over the weekend with bolder action and rhetoric, to avoid the Tory party entering a “death spiral”.
Moderates argue that elections in the UK can only be won from the centre ground, however, and are cautioning against veering further to the right.
Their assessment of the party’s woeful position in the polls, with less than three weeks to go until election day, instead blames poor leadership by Sunak and his recent decision to call an early election — before key campaign building blocks were in place.
The prime minister’s attempt to consolidate the right-wing vote by offering “red meat” policies on national service and gender ideology backfired by emphasising the gap between the Conservatives and Reform, some moderate MPs argued.
One former Tory minister said: “The mistake was simply assuming Reform voters are not real Reform voters — they’re Conservative voters who can be won back with crackpot policies like mandatory national service.”
Conservative candidates warned that they feared the so-called “crossover” poll would hand Reform more momentum and “respectability”, ahead of election day.
Luke Tryl, chief executive of More in Common, a consultancy that has convened a series of focus groups, said that Sunak’s campaign strategy was not working and voters in Clacton — where Farage is standing — and elsewhere were turning to Reform to fill a vacuum left by the Tory leader’s campaign.
“The Conservatives have to shift the narrative to put Reform under greater scrutiny and be prepared to take on Farage more directly, including digging in more on immigration,” he said. “They’re essentially giving them a free run.”