‘Your country needs you’
Back me if you believe in Britain, says May in final appeal to nation
THERESA MAY today urges “patriotic” Labour supporters to abandon the party and vote Conservative for the sake of the nation’s future as she says: “Your country needs you.”
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister asks voters to remember “in the privacy of the polling booth” that they must choose a leader with “the ability to knuckle down and get the job done” on Brexit.
She says the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in No10 is “unthinkable” because: “Rarely can a candidate for high office have been so singularly ill-equipped.”
Mrs May also promises to keep people “safe and secure” and to build a more prosperous country post-brexit in which “our best days lie ahead”.
“Today it is over to you,” she adds. “Back me if you believe in Britain.”
Security at polling stations will be stepped up today with the nation remaining on high alert in the wake of the weekend’s terrorist attack, and Mrs May once again said that “I hope people go out to vote to show that our democracy will not be deterred by the terrorists”.
After a campaign which was dominated by security policy after it was, uniquely, suspended twice due to terrorist attacks, Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn returned to their core messages yesterday as they visited key marginals on an exhausting final day.
Mrs May concentrated on Brexit and the economy, while Mr Corbyn warned that the NHS and other public services would be under threat if the Conservatives were re-elected. It came as:
♦ Eve-of-election polls gave the Conservatives an average lead of six points, putting them on course for a majority of up to 100.
♦ Diane Abbott was replaced temporarily as shadow home secretary because of illness, with the shadow home office minister Lyn Brown taking over.
♦ Labour refused to back Mrs May’s plans to clamp down on terrorist suspects, saying human rights laws had not impeded counter-terrorism measures in the past.
♦ Mr Corbyn, who began his day in Glasgow and ended it in the Islington South constituency in London, was heckled over his record on terrorism.
The Prime Minister said she was “feeling good” as she began her final day of campaigning at 5.30am with a visit to Smithfield meat market in London before clocking up 600 miles on a tour of the Midlands and the South with her husband, Philip, by her side.
She ended the day in Birmingham, where the entire Cabinet joined her and she took to the stage to the Beatles song Here Comes the Sun.
Earlier, during a rally in Norfolk, she appealed to people who are “fiercely patriotic”. She said: “I would say to people it’s not a question of how they voted before, it’s a question of who they want to see taking this country through not just the next five years but setting the direction of this country for the future.
“I would say to those voters that I think many of them will be people... who are fiercely patriotic, who are very proud of their part of the country, who want to see good jobs for their children, who want their children to get a good quality of education, who want the public services to be there to support them when they need it.
“We will be on people’s side.” She said that only a strong economy could deliver improvements to public services promised in her manifesto.
Downing Street aides have set a target of an overall majority of 50 to 60 seats, but when asked what would constitute success, Mrs May said: “I have never set those sorts of targets. I just get out there, go out and about, take my message and the message is the same since the beginning of the campaign that there’s a very clear choice for people when they come to vote.”
In her editorial for The Telegraph, Mrs May says that only by re-electing the Conservatives will the country get the best deal from Europe and “fulfil the promise of Brexit together”. The alternative, she says, is the prospect of a “weak and hapless Labour leader sneaking into No 10 via a backdoor coalition with the Liberal Democrats and SNP”.
Mr Corbyn was heckled over his record on terrorism on a visit to Glasgow, but, like Mrs May, urged voters of every stripe to turn out to show that “democracy will never be cowed by terror”.
Speaking at a rally in north London, he said: “In the course of this campaign people have lost their lives… We can honour the victims of these atrocities tomorrow by voting.”