The country will wake up tomorrow with either Boris Johnson still as Prime Minister or Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. That is the choice. There is no other.

Mr Johnson will either win an outright majority and carry on in No 10 to see Brexit through and consolidate an ambitious five-year programme for the Conservatives. Or he will fail to win enough seats, as Theresa May did in 2017, and try to cobble together another “confidence and supply” arrangement, or continue as a minority government.

If neither of those are possible he will resign and the Queen will call for Mr Corbyn to see if he can form an administration. The one other alternative, a majority Labour government, looks highly unlikely given the state of the opinion polls.

Faced with such a choice, what does the country do when we go to the polls today? Voters who want to stop Brexit happening might be tempted to back parties they think will deliver another referendum that could then reverse the 2016 decision.

The Lib Dems in particular are relying on tactical voting by Labour supporters and Tory Remainers in London and the South to take seats from the Conservatives. They know if Mr Johnson wins a majority then Brexit happens; another hung parliament will almost certainly result in a second referendum.

But waverers for whom the Tory slogan “Get Brexit Done” is a threat, not a promise, must also consider the dangers of trying to engineer a parliamentary stalemate that might yet keep the UK in the EU. If Brexit goes ahead on January 31 on the terms agreed between Brussels and Mr Johnson, the future is in our hands.

But a hung parliament will make this impossible and will raise the possibility of a hard-Left Labour government taking power in Britain for the first time. This is a real risk. As our ComRes poll published today indicates, the race is far closer than it appeared to be at the outset. Just as in 2017, a large Tory lead has been scaled back during the campaign, with Labour benefiting from Remain voters switching to them as the best option for stopping Brexit, thereby squeezing the Lib Dems.


But the consequences of such tactical voting could be profound if Labour gets in as a result. Mr Corbyn has called this a “once in a lifetime” election and he is right. Labour wants to change the direction of the country from a modern, capitalist nation with free enterprise, backed by a mature welfare system, to a Marxist, high-taxing, centralised state that would drag the country to economic disaster.

Labour’s programme is the most extreme ever put before the British people and conceivably the most Left-wing agenda anywhere in the industrialised world. It would usher in the greatest central government control of the private realm ever seen in peacetime Britain.

This “transformation” will apparently be paid for by corporation taxes, making British business internationally uncompetitive and driving companies abroad, and by asking people on £80,000 and above to “pay a little more”. Soon, there won’t be any wealth for public services like the NHS or for private investment. There will be fewer jobs, falling revenues and a flight of capital. We know this because it has happened before under Labour.

By contrast, a Tory victory will not only put an end to the three-and-a-half year Brexit stalemate but will also unlock all those investment decisions, both corporate and personal, that have been waiting for the uncertainty to end.

This election was called in order to get Brexit done because the configuration of the last parliament made this impossible. As a consequence, the Conservative campaign has been almost entirely fixated on this message, often drowning out a wider story of what the future will hold under a Conservative government with a good working majority for the first time since 1987.

Mr Johnson, chosen as Tory leader to harness his irrepressible optimism about the country, has been required by electoral tactics to keep this enthusiasm largely in check. Yet, given the chance, he can give Britain the leadership it needs to build a prosperous, decent nation underpinned by the institutions that reinforce its stability.

To listen to Labour is to imagine we live in a dirt-poor, intolerant country run by a plutocracy intent on doing down the masses and closing the NHS. This is a complete fantasy and comes particularly ill from a party that has brought anti-Semitism back into mainstream British politics for the first time since the 1930s.

If ever there was a party and a leader that deserves to be emphatically rejected at the polls it is Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. We urge voters to do precisely that today and give Mr Johnson and the Conservatives a sizeable Commons majority that will allow the country to move forward.