Rishi Sunak runs out of time to change the tune ahead of Britain’s July 4 polls

London: With less than three weeks until Britain’s election day, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is running out of time to change an ominous tune for his Conservative Party.

The UK leader — who in recent days travelled to a Group of Seven summit and a Swiss conference on the Ukraine war — has been dogged by questions about whether voters are about to bring his time in office to an abrupt end on July 4. Polls continue to give the left-of-centre opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer a double-digit lead over Sunak’s Conservatives, who have been in power for 14 years under five different prime ministers.

Sunak’s attempts to close the gap have had little apparent impact. The biggest splash he’s made in the campaign so far was a gaffe – the prime minister’s decision to skip an international ceremony in France on June 6 marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He has been apologising ever since.

Commentators are starting to talk about doomsday scenarios for the Conservatives, who have governed Britain for almost two-thirds of the past 100 years and won 365 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in the 2019 election.

University of Strathclyde politics professor John Curtice, one of Britain’s most respected polling experts, said Conservative support is at its lowest point in UK polling history, and Sunak “must be beginning to doubt his decision to call the election early.” In the past week, both Conservatives and Labour have released their election manifestos, the detailed packages of promises that form the centrepiece of their pitch to voters.