Sunak Pins Faith On Johnson To Help Tories Escape Mire

PM dashes to South West to try to shore up Tory seats as Osborne warns Sunak he is 'fighting the wrong campaign'

- DAVID MADDOX KATE DEVLIN

Rishi Sunak was warned he is “fighting the wrong campaign” as he has placed his hopes on an intervention by Boris Johnson to try to stave off an election meltdown. The prime minister took a trip to southwest England yesterday in a bid to rescue seats from a pincer movement by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right and Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the left.

But as Mr Sunak was openly mocked by his rivals amid images of him speaking on hay bales and sheep running away when he tried to feed them, former chancellor George Osborne, who ran the winning election campaigns in 2010 and 2015, heaped criticism on the beleaguered prime minister.

As the sheep fled in front of him, Mr Sunak tried to joke: “I think they thought we were shearers.” But Mr Osborne warned Mr Sunak should spend more time defending “blue wall” Tory seats in the south of England where “Labour is being allowed to run riot”.

“Sunak is being pulled into fighting, in my view, the wrong campaign which is trying to stop Reform coming second whereas he should still be trying to focus on limiting the damage of Labour coming first or limiting the loss for the Conservatives,” Mr Osborne said on his Political Currency podcast.