Grant Shapps has begged voters not to give Keir Starmer a “super majority”, as the latest polls suggest the Tories are on course for a heavy defeat on July 4.
The defence secretary said on Wednesday it would be “very bad news” for the country if Labour had “unchecked power”.
Labour has held a commanding poll lead for some time. A YouGov survey on Tuesday put Labour on 38%, the Tories on 18%, Reform UK on 17%, the Lib Dems on 15%, the Greens on 8% and the SNP on 2%.
If those numbers are run through the Electoral Calculus website it shows the Tories would be only the third largest party in parliament with the Lib Dems forming the official Opposition.
It comes after the Conservatives used a Facebook advertising campaign to warn that result was possible, in an attempt to persuade people not to back Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and spit the conservative vote.
In an interview on Times Radio, Shapps said: “You want to make sure that in this next government, whoever forms it, that there’s a proper system of accountability... you don’t want to have somebody receive a super majority.
“The concern would be that if Keir Starmer were to go into No.10 and that power was in some way unchecked, it would be very bad news for people in this country, a blank cheque approach, allowing to do anything they wanted.”
Asked if he was “conceding” the election, the defence secretary said he was “not really sort of getting into the processology of it”.
He added: “There is everything to fight for, and we are fighting for every single seat in this country.
“The polls have been wrong before. But I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say the country doesn’t function well when you get majorities the size of Blair’s or even bigger.
“There are a lot of very good, hardworking MPs who can hold the government of the day to account. And we’d say those are Conservative MPs.”
In a sign of how defensive the Tory campaign is, an analysis by The Times showed that only three of the 49 campaign visits by Rishi Sunak and cabinet ministers have been to non-Conservative held seats.
The prime minister also launched his party’s manifesto yesterday in South Northamptonshire, which has a Tory majority of 27,761. By contrast, Boris Johnson launched his 2019 manifesto in the marginal seat of Telford which the Tories only held at the time by 720 votes.