Rishi Sunak has been accused of being “entitled and arrogant” by Reform UK deputy leader Ben Habib after the Prime Minister claimed a vote for anyone other than the Tories was “a vote for Labour”.
Mr Sunak was speaking after Thursday’s by-election in Wellingborough and Kingswood, with Mr Habib, a candidate in the former, picking up 13 percent of the vote as Labour’s Gen Kitchen sealed victory.
In the latter, also won by Sir Keir Starmer’s party, Reform’s candidate, Rupert Lowe, took 10.5 percent, more than Damien Egan’s winning margin over the Conservatives.
Reacting the day after the result, which makes Mr Habib Reform’s most-successful ever Parliamentary candidate in terms of vote share, he told Express.co.uk: “It is entirely wrong for Sunak to say that a vote for any party other than his own is a vote for Starmer.
“It’s wrong at multiple levels. For a start it implies that the electorate only have a choice between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, that somehow there’s an entitlement for the Conservatives or Labour to be governing the country and that it’s just a binary choice.”
Mr Habib, a former Brexit Party MEP, stressed: “As we’ve proven it is not a binary choice.
“There is a third party which has come in firmly onto the political landscape and that is reformed UK, offering an agenda of national policies made with the British people’s interests in mind, not the globalist, high taxation, borrow and spend agenda, including the economically emasculating Net Zero, which the Conservatives seem wedded to and Labour would just be the same old policies on steroids.”
The “genuine choice” the electorate had was a 180-degree turn with Reform, Mr Habib declared.
He warned: “If people vote for Labour or the Conservatives, they’re going to go on getting the policies that Labour and Conservatives hold together.
“If change is wanted by the electorate, it’s only Reform UK that offer it.”
Turning his attention to the PM specifically, he said: “It’s incredibly arrogant of Rishi Sunak to imply that the votes should always come out for the Conservative Party and that a vote elsewhere is a vote for Starmer – arrogant and wrong.
“What Rishi Sunak needs to sort out is the woeful performance of their governance of the country.
“That is why they’re losing votes – because the Conservative Party is broken, and they’ve broken the country.”
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Mr Sunak said: “Later this year, we will have a general election that will decide who governs our country.
“I am confident that by then we will have made more progress, that the plan will be delivering the security and opportunity that people crave.”
He continued: “At the next election, I will need the support of everyone who wants lower taxes and secure borders because the alternative, Keir Starmer, believes in neither of those things.
“The Conservative family must come together to defeat Labour and ensure a brighter future for our country.
“A vote for anyone other than the Conservatives will just help Starmer.”
