Boris Johnson today made a final plea to voters on the eve of local elections that decide his fate.
The PM vowed to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and create ‘high-wage, high-skill jobs’ as he begged the public to stick with the Tories.
Amid signs candidates have been distancing themselves from the leadership, Mr Johnson also urged people to look at the performance of their local authorities.
And he insisted he would still be PM to fight – and win – the next general election.
The final appeal came as Mr Johnson visited Eastleigh on the south coast, with polls suggesting the Tories are on course for a drubbing.
Some have warned the party could lose 500 seats, as MPs mull whether to mount a coup bid in the wake of the Partygate scandal.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has been in Wakefield going on the attack over the rising prices that have been hammering families.
But the Labour leader has also been struggling to fend off questions about alleged lockdown breaches, amid claims he ordered £200 of curry for up to 30 aides at around 10pm during a visit to Durham last year. He was pictured drinking beer at the gathering, but insists his team were working.
Cabinet ministers have been raising alarm at the prospect of ‘carnage in Surrey in Oxfordshire’ as the Lib Dems stage a revival at the government’s expense.
Scotland looks grim for the Conservatives, with the SNP again dominating and Labour set to push them into third place.
However, noises coming out of London suburbs and key Red Wall areas have been less gloomy.
Mr Johnson could be saved by the fact that the seats being contested largely date from 2018, when Labour performed very strongly – meaning the scope for losses is limited.
One Cabinet minister told the Spectator that they expect the weekend’s headlines will be about a ‘Blue Wall meltdown’ and ‘carnage in Surrey and Oxfordshire’.
‘Things are particularly bad in Scotland, bad in London, not great in the South West, but in the Red Wall marginals the mood is not that bad,’ one loyalist minister said.
However, Tory polling expert Lord Hayward suggested that the party’s losses could be between 250 and 350.
He told MailOnline: ‘One of the things that is becoming clear is that people you talk to are stating anti-Boris, anti-London, anti-Westminster things.’
He said some candidates were branding themselves ‘local Conservatives’. In Hartlepool some hopefuls have added a note to their election literature asking people not to punish them for the behaviour of national politicians.
‘They are a growing number of people who are openly dissenting from Boris and trying to separate themselves from Boris,’ the peer said.
Lord Hayward also said postal votes seemed to be down by 7 per cent to 10 per cent compared to 2018 – suggesting that turnout will be low.
‘I don’t think this will benefit any one party but more that the electorate is saying ‘a plague on all your houses’,’ the peer said.
‘I do not expect a compensatory higher turnout on the day. More a case of a general decline in overall turnout.
‘In 2018 all local authorities in England averaged 34.7 per cent… My expectation is therefore that turnout will be hard pushed to reach 30 per cent in 2022.’
Opinium’s Chris Curtis has joined experts cautioning about overestimating the likely scale of Tory losses.
‘On the headline numbers, I just don’t think we’re heading for a high number of losses — we’re talking considerably fewer than 500,’ he told the Financial Times.
‘Labour is now slightly ahead of the Tories in voting intention polls, compared to a neck-and-neck result when these seats were last fought in 2018, but that isn’t enough of a change for a dramatic upset.’
So far only a handful of MPs have publicly confirmed sending a letter, with many critics of Mr Johnson holding back due to the war in Ukraine, although results of the elections and any further developments in the partygate saga could change that position.
Mr Eustice told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘All prime ministers will always be very conscious of the mood in their parliamentary party because no government can get anything done unless it enjoys the support of the parliamentary party as a whole.
‘So of course the Prime Minister will be thinking about these things. But for now, he’s also making sure that we deal with some of the international challenges like the problems in Ukraine, that we give them the support they need, that we help steer our economy through this period where we’re getting some inflationary pressures.
‘And up and down the country we’ve got councillors fighting elections on local issues, things like planning, things like local council tax, and we’re doing our part and the Prime Minister is playing his part to support our councillors in those campaigns for tomorrow’s elections.’
In Southampton, the PM told reporters he was ‘absolutely confident that we have the right agenda for the country’.
‘I have a big mandate to deliver,’ he said.
Asked if he would still be there at the next election, due to be held in 2024 at the latest, Mr Johnson said: ‘Of course. And I’m also very confident we will succeed at the next election.’
In a bruising interview with Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today, Sir Keir repeatedly insisted the group had been at work in Durham last year.
He also finally confirmed that police have not been in touch about the event, after dodging answering yesterday.
But Sir Keir looked distinctly uncomfortable as he failed to deny that there had been dozens of people present.
He stressed that the group had been ‘on the road’ for elections last year, and were still working even though it was around 10pm.
Sir Keir was ridiculed by Tories after he refused to commit to reversing the national insurance hike, despite condemning it for months.
‘In terms of what we will do going into the next election, obviously, I don’t know what the state of the economy will then be,’ he said.
‘Nobody knows what the state of the economy will then be. We will set out our plans when we get to the election in full.’
Asked if he would raise the top rate of income tax, Sir Keir again ducked the question.
‘You’re absolutely right to push me. But the leader of the opposition, two years away from an election, not knowing what’s going to happen to the economy, can’t possibly set out in detail what we will do,’ he said.
Mr Johnson has been hoping to move on from his own showdown on GMB yesterday.
The PM was confronted with the example of pensioner Elsie, whose energy costs in her council flat have risen from £17 to £85 a month.
Reid told the premier that she now ‘uses her freedom bus pass to stay on buses all day to avoid using energy at home’.
Extraordinarily, Mr Johnson replied by saying he had brought in the free bus pass that Elsie was using – even though in fact the benefit had been introduce years before he was London Mayor.
Speaking to LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr, Reid said: ‘I’ve spoken to Elsie, since the interview this morning with the Prime Minister, and she says how disappointed she is with what he said.
‘Because she says there are people who are even worse off than she is, and there was no answer for them, apart from ‘oh I was the person who was responsible for the bus pass,’ I mean, as if she’s supposed to be grateful.’
Meanwhile, Environment Secretary George Eustice said in a round of interviews this morning that Elsie should be asking for money from her local council rather than riding buses.
‘Well, my advice would be that, you know, not to stay on a on a bus all day to try and stay warm,’ he told Sky News.
‘My advice would be to seek some support from the local authority.’
Mr Eustice also sparked a backlash by suggested people should buy more value brands to help save money amid the cost-of-living crisis.