To turn hard right now, Mr Sunak, would guarantee electoral disaster

Editorial: The prime minister should remember that elections are won or lost in the centre ground. Unfortunately for him, there is now no escaping the spectre of Nigel Farage, who was the ghost at the TV debate feast

In different times, Rishi Sunak’s pledge on immigration might have been a vote winner – but the public have heard it all before (AFP via Getty)

Rishi Sunak went into the first televised head-to-head debate with Sir Keir Starmer knowing that he needed a game-changer to alter the course of an election campaign that appeared to be going from bad to worse for the Conservatives.

The prime minister will have been relieved that he could finally present voters with “the choice” between him and Sir Keir; the whole point of calling a July election was to force people who have written off the Tories to at least look more closely at the only possible alternative. But ominously for Mr Sunak, the build-up to the ITV debate was dominated by Nigel Farage’s dramatic arrival in the campaign as the new leader of Reform UK and the party’s candidate in Clacton, where he launched his campaign and outlined his aim to enact a reverse takeover of the Conservative Party after the drubbing he expects it to suffer.

For Mr Sunak, there is now no escaping Mr Farage, who was the ghost at the TV debate feast. With the latest opinion polls suggesting a catastrophe for the Tories, Mr Sunak might be tempted to lurch further to the right in a desperate attempt to woo voters attracted by a Farage-led Reform party.

The prime minister should acknowledge that playing to the Tory base on issues such as pensioners’ tax allowances, mandatory national service for 18-year-olds, scrapping “Mickey Mouse” degrees, and sensitive areas such as trans rights, have all failed to move the dial. The measures look more like an attempt to limit the scale of his party’s defeat on 4 July, and to prevent Labour from winning a majority that would virtually guarantee two five-year terms, than a strategy for winning.

The Tories have predictably played the immigration card, promising an annual cap on the number of work and family visas in an effort to reduce net migration every year. But they declined to set a number, and said they would ask the independent Migration Advisory Committee to recommend one.

In different times, the Tories’ pledge on immigration might have been a vote winner, but the public have heard it all before – in fact, from the same party at every election since 2010, when David Cameron promised to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”. Instead, it rose to a record 764,000 in 2022, and still stood at 685,000 last year, after easy election pledges collided with the more important realities of helping the economy by providing skilled workers, staffing vital public services, and the UK performing its duty to people from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.

As with tax, where Jeremy Hunt’s two cuts in national insurance have brought no electoral reward, voters are not inclined to believe a party that has repeatedly broken its promises. Mr Sunak might be a relatively fresh face, and a welcome one after the disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but the public are in no mood to give him the benefit of the doubt. On immigration, no one can blame them.

The danger now is that, under pressure from panicky Conservative candidates, Mr Sunak panders to the hard right – for example, by threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, or proposing a referendum on pulling out of the convention on the grounds that it has stood in the way of the government’s unworkable scheme to send migrants to Rwanda. Several cabinet ministers rightly have grave doubts about such a move, but Mr Sunak might try to bounce them in the hope that they will be reluctant to rock the boat during the election.

Such a rightward turn would be a mistake; apart from tarnishing the UK’s reputation abroad, it would further alienate the under-50s, to whom the Tories must surely at some point make a pitch, and voters in the “blue wall” in the south of England. It would be a terrible legacy for Mr Sunak to leave, overshadowing his welcome achievements in rebuilding bridges with the EU and resolving the tricky problem of the Northern Ireland protocol.

Both main parties should remember that elections are won or lost in the centre ground. Sir Keir has dragged his party there after its left turn under Jeremy Corbyn, but he should not, as he woos 2019 Tory supporters, be tempted to follow the Tories down a hardline route on migration that might hamper economic growth. Mr Sunak should lay out a plan for the next five years that amounts to more than a hastily cobbled-together list of dividing lines with Labour.

Both leaders should remember that “national service”, in its wider sense, is what all politicians should be in business for – putting “country before party”, as Sir Keir promises. For the sake of the country, the centre must hold.