Rishi Sunak says Britain would go ‘back to square one’ with Labour ahead of first major campaign event of year – UK politics live

Good morning. There are three types of campaign you can run during an election: ‘it’s time for a change’ (normally an opposition message, but a governing party can also campaign like this, as Boris Johnson did in 2019); ‘give us time to finish the job’ (the standard incumbent’s message); or (the last resort option) ‘you might not like us, but at least we’re not as bad as the other lot’.

Other things being equal, the change message is normally the most powerful one, and for a few weeks last autumn Rishi Sunak tried hard to make the case that he was the candidate best equipped to offer change. Leading a party in office for more than 13 years, it was a hard sell and eventually Sunak accepted that as an argument it was implausible. Today, after some low-key meetings last week, he is doing his first major campaign event of the year, a PM Connect Q&A with voters in the north-west of England. And, according to a quote released overnight, he will formally adopt message 2 as the Conservative party’s election theme. He will say:

The choice is whether we stick with the plan that is starting to deliver the long-term change our country needs, or go back to square one with the Labour party.

The problem for Sunak is that it is increasingly questionable whether this argument is credible either. “Stick with the plan that is starting to deliver,” he will say, but as Kiran Stacey reports, some of his MPs believe that the only honest campaign message is ‘we may be rubbish, but at least we’re not Labour’. As Kiran says, the Conservative MP Danny Kruger told Conservative party members at a private event last autumn:

The narrative that the public has now firmly adopted – that over 13 years things have got worse – is one we just have to acknowledge and admit.

Some things have been done right and well. The free school movement that Michael Gove oversaw, and universal credit – and Brexit, even though it was in the teeth of the Tory party hierarchy itself, and mismanaged – nevertheless Brexit will be the great standing achievement of our time in office.

These things are significant, but, overall I’m afraid, if we leave office next year, we would have left the country sadder, less united and less conservative than when we found it.

Kruger also said that the Conservatives were at risk of “obliteration” if they did not become more responsive to the needs of the electorate.

Kruger is not just any random backbencher. He is co-chair of the New Conservatives, a new group of rightwing Tory MPs that is about to go to battle with the government in the next few weeks over amendments to the Rwanda bill.

With luck, Sunak will be asked about these comments at the Q&A – although that is not guaranteed, because most of the questions will come from members of the public, not journalists.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech on Scottish independence.

11am: Rishi Sunak holds a PM Connect Q&A event in the north-west of England.

Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting the victims of flooding in the east Midlands.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 3.30pm: There is likely to be a ministerial statement on flooding. Another minister may make a statement, or respond to an urgent question, on the Post Office Horizon scandal. At some point today Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Kevin Hollinrake, the minister for the Post Office, are meeting to discuss how convictions might be cleared swiftly.

Late afternoon: MPs debate the second reading of the offshore petroleum licensing bill.

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