COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Rishi Sunak vows to ‘fight on’ until last day of election campaign



A defiant Rishi Sunak has vowed to fight on until the last day of the election campaign after a torrid weekend in which the prime minister was criticised for missing part of the D-day commemorations.

On the campaign trail in West Sussex on Monday, the prime minister said he believed he could still win back voters and he did not accept that the election result was a foregone conclusion.

Asked later if he had considered quitting, Sunak said “of course not” and said he was energised by the campaign. Over the weekend cabinet ministers were forced to insist that Sunak would not be replaced as leader during the course of the election campaign.

The prime minister was visiting a Horsham garden centre and a neighbourhood watch group, his first media appearance since his apology last week for missing part of the ceremonies in Normandy.

Horsham has a 21,127 Conservative majority and would normally be considered to be deep in the Conservative heartlands, 68th on the Liberal Democrats’ list of targets.

The prime minister also hit back at comments from the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, that his absence meant he was not “patriotic”, saying that insinuation was “not good for our politics or our country”.

Sunak said he was still fighting despite polls consistently showing he is 20 points behind. “But people are gonna say what they’re gonna say; what I’m doing is fighting very hard for every vote. I will keep doing that until the last day of this campaign. And I am very confident in the actions that we’re putting forward for the British people,” he said.

“There’s lots of people who want to write me off, write this off, say this campaign or the election is a foregone conclusion. They’ve been saying that, by the way, since I’ve gotten this job. But the reality is, I’m not going to stop going. I’m not going to stop fighting for the future of our country. I believe in what we are doing.”

The prime minister said he had spent the morning knocking on doors and said voters were “recognising and accepting that we are the party that have put forward big ideas for this country … people can see that in this campaign it is only the Conservatives have big ideas that can change our country for the better, and that started in the first week.”