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8 maltatoday | THURSDAY • 3 JULY 2024 NEWS WORLD POLLS for tomorrow's gen- eral election in the UK show Keir Starmer on the cusp of a supermajority with a 20-point lead over the Tories. This could potentially give Labour a 200-seat majority, surpass- ing the 179-seat majority that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule. What is incredible is that Starmer is set to win big de- spite not being particularly liked. An Ipsos poll published on 26 June showed that only 34% like Starmer, while 57% dislike him. The silver lining for Labour is that the Tories are hated by an even greater margin: 67% dislike Sunak and 72% dislike the Conservative party. The toxicity of the Tory brand, contaminated by in- fighting and fiscal austerity which kept people struggling to make ends meet, is the main reason for Labour's success. These poll results explain why Labour is not complacent, fearing that the lack of enthu- siasm for Starmer, coupled with the sheer certainty that Labour will win anyway, could result in a narrower majority on polling day. Playing it safe To avert this outcome, Labour has played it safe, banking on widespread disenchantment with increasingly dysfunction- al Tory rule while refraining from any commitment to re- verse Brexit, despite a growing realisation that it has contrib- uted to the country's decline. Moreover, Labour has shunned the radical policies that char- acterized its platform during the Jeremy Corbyn years. La- bour advanced by 30 seats in 2017 by garnering its highest vote share since 2001 (40%), only to implode in 2020 when the Tories tore into Labour's red wall under Boris Johnson, whose populism tapped into the sentiments of Leave voters. A move to the centre This time around, Labour has put wealth creation at the heart of its pitch to voters, with the Labour leader vowing to pro- vide political and economic stability to help businesses re- ignite the country's paltry rate of economic growth. Elected Labour leader in 2020 on the promise of repackag- ing Jeremy Corbyn's radical economic policies into a more electable platform, Starmer has proceeded to demolish his pre- decessor's legacy and return Labour to the centre ground. Gone are a number of com- mitments Starmer himself had initially endorsed, including the promise to abolish tuition fees for university students, plans to nationalise energy compa- nies, railways, the Royal Mail, and water companies, and the promise to introduce a new top tax band for the country's high- est earners. Instead, Labour has limited itself to promising to invest more in the National Health Service with clear tar- gets on cutting waiting lists, building more affordable homes by relaxing planning rules, and notably forming a new publicly owned energy company run on clean energy with the aim of lowering energy bills. Party purge Despite being elected Labour leader as a 'unifier' who would keep the left on board while appealing to centrist voters, Starmer proceeded to purge his party of left-wingers, including Jeremy Corbyn himself, who was expelled on the pretext of anti-Semitism by conflat- ing the left's criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish prejudice. As far back as 2021, Starmer had made it clear that winning big is more important for him than party unity. Asked by the BBC whether his priority was win- ning or party unity, he replied: "Winning. Winning a gener- al election. I didn't come into politics to vote over and over again in parliament and lose Starmer's supermajority: How The UK will go to the polls on Thursday with the only question being how big Labour's majority will be. JAMES DEBONO reports. While Starmer can be credited as the architect of a new majority for a centre-left party at a time when other centre-left parties are sinking, the extent of Labour's lead can only be explained by the toxicity of the Conservative Party Rishi Sunak