Rishi Sunak makes impassioned plea for disillusioned Tory voters NOT to ‘surrender’ the country to Labour: As election campaign enters its final week, PM uses the last TV debate to slam Sir Keir Starmer on everything from tax to immigration

Rishi Sunak issued a rallying cry to disillusioned Tories last night as he repeatedly called on voters not to ‘surrender’ the country to chaos under the Labour Party – with the election campaign entering its final week.

The phrase became a recurring theme of the BBC debate as the public were warned against the consequences of Conservative capitulation.

The Prime Minister told voters to not ‘surrender our borders’, to not ‘surrender your family finances’ and even to not ‘surrender your local council’ as the phrase was used a total of 12 times – nearly once every six minutes.

The calls for sense came as Mr Sunak, 44, battled against Sir Keir Starmer, 61, in a fiery showing where he tore into the Labour leader over immigration and his ‘dishonesty’ on tax as he battles against a Tory meltdown.

The PM accused the Labour leader of trying to trick Brits as they went head-to-head on BBC One barely a week before the country casts their ballots.

And the fiercest exchanges came over immigration, with Mr Sunak saying the people-smuggling gangs would ‘need a bigger boat’ if Labour wins the election. 

The clashes became so heated that, as he gave his closing statement repeating his claim that Labour would hike families’ taxes by £2,000, Sir Keir could be heard shouting ‘that’s a lie’.

It comes as:

• A Labour member was suspended by the party after being arrested in connection with the ‘honeytrap’ scandal;

• Former Labour minister Dawn Butler caused fresh outrage by backing Dr Who actor David Tennant’s call for Kemi Badenoch to ‘shut up’;

• A snap YouGov poll suggested viewers as a whole thought the debate was a tie, and found that 82 per cent of people who voted Tory in 2019 thought Mr Sunak won the debate;

• Sir Keir Starmer refused to say whether gaffe-prone Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy would be handed a Cabinet job if Labour wins;

• Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride warned that politicians may have to be banned from betting on elections;

• Labour was reported to be drawing up secret plans to add millions of young people to the electoral roll, in a way the Tories warned would ‘open the door to electoral fraud’.

The two rivals did not appear to shake hands afterwards as they thanked presenter Mishal Husain.

However, the unedifying squabbling did not seem to impress the audience, with one infuriated man asking: ‘Are you two seriously the best we have got to be the next PM of our great country?’ 

A snap YouGov poll found that TV viewers thought they fought each other to a standstill, splitting 50-50 on who had won. 

Asked about Mr Sunak’s frequent use of the word ‘surrender’ after the debate, Home Secretary James Cleverly said: ‘What we’re saying is don’t give away, as a voter, do not give away your agency.

‘Because we know that Labour are looking to reopen freedom of movement by the back door in complete contravention to what the British people want.’

But the frequent use of the phrase was teased by some online – with 5Live presenter Chris Warburton saying he may be forced to ”surrender’ to watching Georgia v Portugal by the end of this’.

FT columnist Stephen Bush added that he had Cheap Trick’s Surrender stuck in his head after watching the show, while former London Mayor candidate Siobhan Benita joked: ‘now we’ll have to listen to every Tory saying this in every interview for the next eight days.’

Mr Sunak kicked off the exchanges by fending off a question about Tories being caught up in the election betting scandal, while Sir Keir jibed that the premier had been fined for Partygate rule breaches. 

The PM hit back: ‘Keir Starmer talks about leadership and politics… I think leadership means being straight with people… 

‘He’s not being honest with everyone about his plans to raise their taxes.’ 

He pointed to a recording of shadow Treasury minister Darren Jones admitting that Labour’s Net Zero goals will cost ‘hundreds of billions’ of pounds.

Mr Sunak acknowledged that the public was ‘frustrated’ with him and his party, but warned that Labour would let Channel migrants ‘out on our streets’, and ditching the Rwanda scheme would mean people smugglers would ‘need a bigger boat’. 

Mr Sunak was also clapped as he said Sir Keir ‘wanted to be in charge’ but had ‘got nothing to say about what you would do about it’.

But Sir Keir received his own round of applause as he complained that Mr Sunak kept interrupting him, saying if he ‘listened’ more he wouldn’t be seen as so ‘out of touch’. 

He said the Tories had raised tax ’26 times’ and tagged him ‘Liz Truss mark two’.

But Sir Keir refused to match the Tory pledge that the basic state pension will never be taxed. With tax thresholds frozen, this raises the prospect that older people could be forced to pay income on the state pension for the first time during Labour’s first term.

Mr Sunak said: ‘If you are a pensioner, you should know, there is a retirement tax coming for you – capital R, capital T – if he is your prime minister.’

In response, Sir Keir said: ‘Pensioners are not going to be better off with a Prime Minister who’s making promises that he can’t keep because they’re not funded.’ But the PM said Labour was not revealing the truth about its tax plans – and suggested Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves could impose punishing rises within weeks of coming to office. 

‘Trust me now, all your taxes are going to be going up by thousand of pounds,’ he said.

‘It’s in their DNA, mark my words. Your pension, your council tax, your home, your car, you name it, they will tax it, which is why he can’t rule out raising your taxes.’

The Labour leader struggled as he was grilled on whether he would provide legal protection for women-only spaces, after one of his frontbenchers suggested pre-op trans women should use women’s toilets.

Mr Sunak had claimed the Labour leader is ‘not sure like I am… that sex is biological sex and that’s how you protect female only spaces and services’.

JK Rowling responded on social media by hinting that Sir Keir had lost her vote.

The Harry Potter author posted: ‘It’s very important that we protect women’s spaces… but men can also be women, says the Labour leader.

‘My postal vote is literally lying next to me. I wanted to wait to hear what @KeirStarmer said tonight to fill it in.’

The primetime clash at Nottingham Trent University – which was dogged by noises from pro-Palestinian protesters outside – had been viewed as Mr Sunak’s last major opportunity to revive his fortunes after a nightmare election campaign.  

However, the scale of the challenge for the premier was underlined earlier this evening, with more grim mega-polls showing the Tories on track to get smashed – and one even putting them in third behind the Lib Dems.

But as he faced down the Labour leader the PM said Labour would make Britain the ‘soft touch of Europe’ on immigration by scrapping the Rwanda deportation scheme. 

And he ridiculed Sir Keir’s claim he could clear a backlog of up to 100,000 illegal migrants, many of whom are from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran, with which Britain has no prospect of a returns deal.

‘Are you going to sit down with the Iranian ayatollahs, do a deal with the Taliban?’ he said. ‘It’s completely nonsensical what you’re saying. You are taking people for fools.’

Mr Sunak said it was ‘completely unfair’ that people were able to ‘jump the queue for services’ if they travel here illegally.

Sir Keir said he would process the claims of those who arrived – but refused to rule out the possibility that most would eventually be given asylum.

The Prime Minister won applause from the audience by using an apparent reference to the film Jaws, saying: ‘If Labour win, the people smugglers are going to need a bigger boat. Don’t surrender our borders to the Labour Party.’

But Sir Keir said ‘record numbers are coming across the Channel’ and insisted that only ‘a few hundred’ people would be sent to Rwanda, compared to tens of thousands of arrivals.

He confirmed that Labour would scrap the Rwanda scheme, but insisted that the Channel migrant crisis could be solved by ‘smashing’ the criminal gangs.

And he said the PM was in no position to ‘lecture’ the country over immigration after overseeing record arrivals.

Mr Sunak said the ‘price’ of any new Labour deal with the EU would be bringing back free movement.

Sir Keir described the claim as ‘complete nonsense’ and insisted free movement would be a red line in any negotiation with Brussels. But he said he was ‘not a defeatist’ and would seek a better deal with the EU on trade.

Sir Keir accused Mr Sunak of being ‘bullied’ into responding to the betting allegations, after it took weeks for the Conservatives to withdraw support for two candidates.

The Labour leader said: ‘You have to lead from the front on issues like this. I think that in the last 14 years politics has become too much about self entitlement, and MPs thinking about what they could get for themselves.’

He added: ‘The instinct of these people to think the first thing they should do is try to make money, that was the wrong instinct, and we have to change that.’

Sir Keir continued: ‘What I did, when one of my team was alleged to have been involved and investigated by the Gambling Commission, they were suspended within minutes, because I knew it made it really important to be swift, the Prime Minister delayed and delayed and delayed until eventually he was bullied into taking off.’

Mr Sunak said: ‘It was important to me, that given the seriousness and the sensitivity of the matters at hand that they were dealt with properly, and that’s what I’ve done.’

After audience member Robert Blackstock asked ‘are you two really the best we’ve got’, the Labour leader said: ‘I’m not surprised after 14 years of this that people feel this way because the country is in such a state.

‘They’ve had loads of promises made in the last election about what will happen which haven’t been delivered on, that does beat the hope out of people.

‘The very first question was about integrity in politics, and again people haven’t seen that integrity – they’ve had Partygate, they’ve had breach of Covid rules, you’ve had the contracts for Covid – the instinct of some people to think the first thing in Covid I’m going to do is try to make money.

‘So, this is an opportunity to restore that hope. I don’t think we can do that by making sort of grand promises of things that can’t be delivered.’

Rather, he said, it’s ‘the ordinary hope of getting on yourself, getting on for your family, getting on for your community, your country. It has to be rooted, if we’re going to restore hope in my view, in returning politics to service, the sense that you come into politics to serve’.

Both committed to protecting women’s rights to single-sex spaces, regardless of whether someone has a gender recognition certificate.

Mr Sunak said: ‘Yes, unequivocally yes. And we will do that by changing the law, so that the old Equalities Act recognises that sex means biological sex.’

But Sir Keir feathered his answer, adding: ‘What I will also say is that I do recognise that there are a small number of people who are born into a gender that they don’t identify with, and I will treat them, as I treat all human beings, with dignity and respect.’

Sir Keir received applause and whoops from the audience, before continuing: ‘I’ll tell you for why, because if you don’t, we end up with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom standing in Parliament making an anti-trans joke in front of the mother of a murdered trans teenager.’

Mr Sunak replied: ‘That’s not what I did, I was pointing out that you’ve changed your mind on this question multiple times.’

The tetchy rowing continued right to the end. In his closing statement Mr Sunak said: ‘I understand why you’re frustrated with our party, with me, I get it. But this is not a by-election, it’s a choice with profound consequences for you and our country. And before you make that choice, think what a Labour government would mean.

‘Can you afford to pay at least £2,000 more in tax? And why won’t Keir Starmer be straight with you about what he wants to do? And if you’re not certain about Labour, don’t surrender to them, don’t vote for any other party, vote Conservative.’

The Labour leader could be heard protesting as he spoke, and in his own parting shot he said: ‘That is a lie, he’s been told not to repeat that lie and he’s just done it.’

He added: ‘My message to you is simple: if you want your NHS back, you have to vote for it. If you want a growing economy, you have to vote for it.

‘If you want more police on our streets or teachers in our schools, you have to vote for it. If you want to end 14 years of chaos … then that power is in your hands, on July the 4th, vote change, vote Labour.’

Mr Sunak is desperately trying to change his fortunes as the election betting scandal continues to rage.

He has also struggled to shake off the D-Day debacle.

Meanwhile, Tories fear that Reform will split the right-wing vote next week, opening the door for Labour to rack up seats.

Allies of the PM hope that messages about the danger of a Labour ‘supermajority’ is starting to hit home, while there have been tentative signs that Mr Farage’s surge might have peaked after he controversially claimed the West ‘provoked’ Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

We Think research conducted using the so-called MRP methodology suggested Labour could get a majority of 280 – the biggest in modern political history. 

That poll saw the Conservatives reduced to just 76 MPs.

But a Find Out Now survey carried out with Electoral Calculus projected an even more dramatic outcome. It found the Tories could be slashed to just 60 seats, behind the Lib Dems with 71. 

In that scenario, the Conservatives would not be the official opposition and Nigel Farage’s Reform would have 18 seats. 

MRPs are now widely regarded as ‘gold standard’ in the polling industry, but they have been suggesting widely differing outcomes depending on assumptions such as likelihood to vote. They also take a longer period to conduct, meaning some of the research dates back weeks.  

The enormous win for Sir Keir is being predicted despite signs that he is deeply unpopular with Brits.

Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus said they had ‘calibrated’ results of their own polling to ‘match the average of recent national polls’, after it suggested the Tories were two points behind Reform.

The overall figures in that MRP are for a Labour landslide with a majority of 250 seats. That would be bigger than Tony Blair’s win, and only exceeded by the 1931 result.

The Conservatives’ tally would be the worst since at least 1900 – before universal suffrage.

Mr Sunak would be among a swathe of senior ministers to lose their own seats. 

Meanwhile, Reform would pick up 18, with Mr Farage finally entering Parliament alongside Richard Tice.

The wider picture is of apathy among the public. An Ipsos survey indicated that 75 per cent were dissatisfied with Rishi Sunak, with just 25 per cent satisfied.

But Sir Keir’s figures were not much better, with 52 per cent negative and 33 per cent positive about his performance. 

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Home Secretary Mr Cleverly branded Sir Keir’s performance ‘weak and fragile’.

‘He refused over and over again to rule out tax rises, Keir Starmer is going to put taxes up,’ the Cabinet minister said.

‘He was asked explicitly, will you rule out putting up taxes for the first time ever on state pensioners? He refused to do so.’

Mr Cleverly added: ‘When pushed about honesty about tax, when pushed around honesty about the impact on the economy, Keir Starmer fumbled, fumbled and then tried to talk over the Prime Minister.’

The Home Secretary said both he and the PM ‘recognised there are frustrations’ among voters following the impact of the Covid crisis and the Ukraine war on the economy.

But he warned five years was a ‘long time’ to live under a Labour government.

Quizzed about the leaked recording of Mr Jones saying Labour’s green plans will cost ‘hundreds of billions’ of pounds, Labour’s Pat McFadden – the party’s campaign chief – told reporters: ‘What Darren was clearly talking about was the level private sector investment that you can get if you have a government that’s willing to step up to the plate.

‘So rather than this being a problem for us, what it shows is that Rishi Sunak – having turned his back on any Government role in the green transition… has sacrificed the high level of private sector investment that’s waiting to come if they know there’s a willing partner in the government of the day.’

Mr McFadden said there was ‘only one prime minister in the room tonight, only one person really engaging with the audience and their problems’ as he praised Sir Keir’s performance.

Asked about Mr Blackstock bemoaning that Mr Sunak and Sir Keir are ‘the best we’ve got, ‘ Mr McFadden replied: ‘I’m very proud we’ve got Keir leading us into the election and we’ll see what voters’ verdict is on 4 July.’

Speaking himself after the debate, Mr Blackstock said he was left unconvinced by the answers he heard from both the PM and Labour leader.

‘I was disappointed with the response from both Rishi and Sir Keir,’ he told the BBC.

‘Neither of them seemed to want to say why they were good – if that makes any sense.

‘They were going on what they’d done in the past, they weren’t being positive.

‘For a PM, from my perspective, we want a personality, we want somebody we can recognise, we want somebody on the world stage that is going to project our Great Britain.

‘That’s what we want.’