Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak will make a last push for votes on the final day of the general election campaign on Wednesday after Boris Johnson made a late intervention.
The former Tory PM made a surprise appearance at Rishi Sunak’s rally at the British Army Museum in Kensington on Tuesday evening.
He told the crowd of several hundred Conservative activists that voting for Labour or backing Reform on Thursday would “achieve nothing but usher in the most left wing government since the war.”
“We must not let it happen,” he said, warning the Labour leader would bring “Starmergeddon” if he wins the keys to Number 10.
Mr Johnson, who won a large majority in 2019 but was ousted as PM after in 2022 after a number of scandals, has filmed endorsement messages for some Conservative election candidates and urged voters not to support Nigel Farage's Reform UK on July 4.
But he has been notably absent from the campaign trail until now, amid a rift with Mr Sunak.
He was greeted by cheers, claps, whistles and chants of "Boris, Boris, Boris".
In an impassioned speech, Mr Johnson said Tory voters needed to draw the party back “from the brink” and prevent Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer winning a “sledgehammer majority”.
Mr Sunak, who is trailing his Labour rival by around 20 points in the polls, thanked Mr Johnson for his support.
It came as the Prime Minister will on Wednesday issue a last ditch plea to voters not to allow an “unchecked” Labour government to move into Downing Street.
While Sir Keir will conclude a whirlwind tour of the country in a final bid secure Labour's return to power after 14 years.
Mr Sunak will warn wavering voters once again to stick with the Conservatives to stop what his party has branded a Labour “supermajority” in the House of Commons.
In an attempt to dissuade the public away from other rival parties, Mr Sunak will also warn a vote for the Liberal Democrats would help to secure a Labour victory, as they will back Labour ideas in the next Parliament, while claiming Reform UK is only likely to win a handful of seats.
Mr Sunak was given a glimmer of hope on Tuesday by a second poll suggesting his party’s gap to the Conservatives was narrowing.
The Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey put Labour on 41 per cent (down one point), Conservatives 22 per cent (up three points) and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK 16 per cent (down two points).
The changes mean Labour’s lead has dropped from 23 points to 19 points, still a large gap.
The latest poll comes just a day after a Savanta survey for the Telegraph on voter intention showed the Conservatives have closed their gap behind Labour to 15 points, the smallest lead for Sir Keir Starmer’s party by this pollster for a month.
Both polls still suggest a big win for Labour but Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta said: “these sorts of numbers imply heavy losses rather than electoral oblivion.”
But in contrast pollster Survation said on Tuesday it was 99% certain that Labour will win more seats than it did in Tony Blair’s landslide Labour victory the last time the party swept to power in 1997.
Sir Keir Starmer’s party is on course to win 484 seats, Survation found.
“The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are in a close race to form the official opposition,” the pollster said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
A probabilistic seat count, based on 34,558 interviews conducted online and on the telephone, puts Labour on course to win 484 seats, the Conservatives on 64 and the Liberal Democrats on 61.
It expects the SNP to win around 10 seats, Reform UK seven, leaving Plaid Cymru and the Green Party with three each.
As the election approached its conclusion, Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden said voters faced a “big choice” on Thursday, between “five more years of chaos with the Conservatives or change with Labour”.
He said: “Don’t forget one rule for them, another for everyone else. Don’t forget the economic chaos for which the British people are still paying the price. Don’t forget the cronyism.
“You can put a stop to it. Change is in your hands, and you can be part of it.”
Despite Labour’s consistent polling lead, Sir Keir has sought to avoid sounding complacent, stressing that polls do not always “predict the future”.
Speaking in Staffordshire on Tuesday, he issued one last rallying cry to activists, saying: "Let's get this over the line, let's get that Labour government."But his campaign stops in the final week of the campaign have suggested ambitious targets, as he visited a series of seats with Conservative majorities of more than 10,000 votes.
Speaking to reporters, he said: “We’re out in constituencies where we haven’t necessarily won before, because we think that many people are disillusioned with what they’ve seen in the last 14 years.
“We’re a changed Labour Party and we’re constantly putting our case forward, still smiling, still with a spring in our step that we’re probably the only positive campaign left now.”
