Final Stretch

And Reform's support has held up.

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Welcome to election week. Soon voters will have their say.

Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

So much has changed since 2019. The Brexit Party standing down gifted Boris Johnson’s Conservatives that big majority.

The Tories then won seats that hadn’t been blue before, with the opportunity to create a historic realignment.

Brexiteers were clear: they wanted to do things differently outside of the EU, maximising Brexit competitive advantage.

The biggest focus of course was the prize of ending EU open borders.

Having seen former Conservative Leaders like David Cameron pledge ‘tens of thousands’ net migration then fail to deliver due to the EU’s freedom of movement, now was the big opportunity to deliver.

Instead, we saw a Conservative Government that wilfully ignored the mainstream view in this country that immigration levels have been too high.

Astonishingly we saw the Tories choose, post-Brexit, to ramp up levels even further.

At the same time they have allowed taxes to surge and failed to take any decisive action whatsoever to stop illegal migrant boats crossing from France.

According to Migration Watch UK, that means over 127,000 people have been allowed to cross to England on small boats since 2018.

The Government didn’t advocate leaving the ECHR after their outrageous interference. Nor did they decide to take the boats back to France. They didn’t start scrapping fishing licences we’ve handed out to the French either.

Instead they handed Macron’s France hundreds of millions of pounds - with the end result that this year has seen yet another record high for crossings.

It’s actually very simple: what’s the point of a Conservative Government that talks tough but delivers high immigration, high taxes and weak borders?

And so the emergence of Reform UK has been inevitable. Those who placed their trust in the Tories have witnessed endless factionalism and infighting within a Conservative Party that seems to be at breaking point.

Just what do Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick actually have in common with the wet One Nation Tories aside from sharing the same colour rosette?

The end result has been a weak Conservative agenda with appalling delivery. Even Rishi Sunak’s manifesto for this election, with his team knowing that they faced an uphill struggle, is more middle-of-the-road gunge trying to please everybody.

What a contrast to the Reform campaign that has undoubtedly electrified the election.

Thousands turned out in Birmingham yesterday for a high-energy rally headlined by Nigel Farage. The party looks nailed-on to secure millions of votes this week.

Sunak’s decision to call the election for July has been a catastrophic mistake for his party. The Tories would have been hoping to squeeze Reform’s support - the very latest figures show they have outright failed to do that.