Rishi Sunak says he thinks he will win the general election

The prime minister said he’s “very proud” of his campaign

Rishi Sunak has said he believes he will win the general election this week, and will still be prime minister on Friday.

With just days to go until the country votes in the general election on Thursday, Sunak took part in a BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg on her Sunday morning politics show.

Asked whether he thought he would be prime minister on Friday, he said: “Yes. I’m fighting very hard and I think people are waking up to the real danger of what a Labour government means.”

The Tories are still 20 points behind Labour in the polls, putting Keir Starmer’s party on course for a supermajority at the election. Some polls are predicting the Conservative party could win less than 100 seats in parliament, and may not even be the official opposition.

There is also a very real possibility that the prime minister himself loses his seat on Thursday.

Sunak also told Kuenssberg he is “very proud” of the election campaign he’s ran and that he believes he will still be prime minister after the election.

This is despite a number of blunders and controversies in the last few weeks, including the comical way the prime minister announced the election, the fallout over his early departure from D-Day commemorations and a gambling scandal.

Elsewhere in the interview, the prime minister said he believes the country is a “better place to live than it was in 2010,” the year the Tories came into power in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

However, he acknowledged that the last couple of years have been “difficult for everyone” due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

On Brexit, Sunak was asked if he thought leaving the EU had damaged the UK’s economy and standing in the world.

The 44-year-old – who backed Brexit during the 2016 referendum – said it had changed the UK’s trading relations but argued it had also enabled the government to cut red tape for businesses and sign new trade deals.

“People are queuing up to work with us because they respect what we do. I completely reject that – it is entirely wrong this declinist narrative people have of the UK,” he said.