LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson returned to the tactics that won the Brexit referendum, delivering an anti-elitist message to voters in the north of England as he launched his final push ahead of Thursday’s general election.
His Conservative Party is hoping to snatch seats from the Labour Party to build a decisive parliamentary majority that can deliver Brexit after three years of wrangling.
Johnson is spending much of the final three days touring constituencies in Labour’s “red wall” — seats in the country’s former manufacturing and industrial heartlands, many of which have supported Labour but voted to leave the European Union.
His message is that their representatives, headed by Jeremy Corbyn, party leader and member of parliament for the chic London borough of Islington, have let down voters in failing to deliver Brexit.
“They won their seats on a false prospectus and then stuck two fingers up to the public,” he is expected to say in Sunderland, which became the symbol of the shock Brexit result. “Now they are proposing another referendum — this time rigging the result by extending the franchise to two million E.U. citizens,” he will say, according to prepared remarks. “It’s been the great betrayal, orchestrated from Islington by politicians who sneer at your values and ignore your votes.”
Johnson was educated at Eton, the country’s most elite private school. But he has frequently argued that he is more in touch with voters than Corbyn, who has shifted his party to the hard left.
Brexit has been the defining issue of the election, which Johnson called two years early in an attempt to push through his deal to leave Europe.
He is banking on securing the members of parliament and the mandate he needs to win votes in the body.
His efforts have been stymied thus far because he is governing with only 298 of the 650 seats.
Opinion polls give him a healthy lead, as much as 12 points in some surveys, but an expected surge in tactical voting could make for an unexpected result if voters break party loyalty to back candidates more in tune with their views on Brexit.
