For some Conservative voters in the U.K., it might have been as if all their general election dreams have come true. Former British prime minister Boris Johnson entered the general election race Tuesday night, with a loud, last-minute plea to Tory voters to stay true to their party—even as polls show Rishi Sunak’s government headed for a drubbing at Thursday’s polls, with Labour led by Keir Starmer heading for a reputed landslide.
“All this is coming now, this week, this gigantic Labour majority pregnant with horrors, because even though Labour’s share of the vote is far lower than ours was in 2019, and even though Starmer has record low approval ratings for a man in his position, our system will deliver that supermajority—because too many good, kind, moderate Tories are about to vote for other parties and thereby get exactly the opposite of what they really want,” Johnson said.
His words, at an event in London also attended by Sunak and other senior party figures, have echoed Sunak and others’ words of recent days, which have amounted to constant attacks on Labour and Starmer personally, warnings of a Labour landslide—with very little positive foregrounding of Conservative policies. The party's negative campaigning is at a voluble zenith.
