MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The battle's not over yet...so don't let the pollsters manipulate you into voting for years of hard Labour

First of all, please do not forget that the election has not yet taken place. There is everything still to play for.

Yes, some postal votes have been cast, but many millions of other votes have not been. The polling stations have not opened, the ballot papers have not been issued. This is no time to accept a defeat that has not happened. Your opinion, your mind and your will all still matter.

Labour has not yet won, however many polls claim that it will do so. The King has not yet summoned Sir Keir Starmer to Buckingham Palace to form a government. He may never do so. Imagine waking up on Friday morning and finding that nightmare has fizzled away.

Millions of voters have not yet put their X next to the name of a Reform candidate, however often the polls suggest that this will be the case.

There has long been a good argument for saying that opinion polls are much more a device for influencing public opinion than measuring it. For indeed they are often wrong and if we feebly let them guide our actions, we are rash and unwise.

Sir Keir Starmer (pictured smiling with his wife Victoria) at a campaign event in central London

The King (left) meets Sir Keir Starmer in September, 2022. The Labour leader has not yet been summoned to Buckingham Palace to form a government

Angela Rayner (left), Keir Starmer (centre) and Victoria Starmer (right) during a Labour campaign rally in central London

They have been spectacularly mistaken in the past. Many will remember Neil Kinnock's surprise defeat in 1992, and Tory Ted Heath's surprise victory in 1970, plus David Cameron's unexpected failure to secure a majority in 2010.

And it is no good thinking they have perfected their methods since then. For they have been wrong recently (in India, Norway and Australia, and in a major Irish referendum on the family).

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But if you want to defeat a powerful opponent, one of the best ways of doing so is to persuade him he is already beaten.

Yellowing leaflets still exist, dropped over Dunkirk by the Germans, telling British and French troops they are surrounded, lying that 'The war is finished for you' and 'Your generals have fled by air'. They urged Allied soldiers to 'Stop fighting!' and 'Lay down your arms'.

Fortunately, those soldiers were not so easily fooled. Few of these lying pamphlets survive because our troops pointedly found a rather basic alternative use for them.

Rather than listen to their seductive demoralising message, they battled on fiercely, retained their spirit and in most cases escaped to fight another day.

As the poet Arthur Hugh Clough wrote, in verses often quoted in bleak moments by Winston Churchill: 'Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain, the enemy faints not, nor faileth, and as things have been they remain.

'If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. It may be, in yon smoke concealed, your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, and, but for you, possess the field'.

It is good advice in any tight corner. Do not assume you have been beaten. Don't abandon ship. Above all do not be manipulated into failing to act as you should.

David Cameron (pictured) failed to secure a majority in 2010

As the poet Arthur Hugh Clough wrote, in verses often quoted in bleak moments by Winston Churchill (pictured): 'Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain, the enemy faints not, nor faileth, and as things have been they remain'

Just because some market research organisation, by much juggling of figures, has concluded that lots of other people are going to do something silly, it does not mean you have to do the same. It does not even mean that those people will do so either. Millions of us only really make our minds up on polling day.

Next, let us tackle the political arguments. Of course, the Tories are unpopular. No government could be in office for 14 years without being unpopular. Governments are human, make mistakes and react badly to events.

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We grow tired of their faces and voices. The Mail on Sunday has been severely critical of many of the Conservatives' actions and inactions.

So we should have been. This has been in so many ways an unsatisfactory and disappointing administration.

But what sort of logic says that this is a reason for letting in Sir Keir, who will beyond doubt be so much worse, and whose face and voice will become wearisome to us pretty quickly?

For in truth, that is the choice before us. As it happens, Rishi Sunak has fought a brave and coherent campaign, besting Sir Keir in debate and continuing to do battle while surrounded by defeatist talk.

Who thinks Sir Keir will be tougher on immigration? Who thinks he will impose fewer taxes on the striving classes?

Who thinks he will combat wokery? But under our voting system, only the Tories or Labour can win the election on Thursday. Reform, for all its boasting, admits in private that it will be lucky to win more than two seats in Parliament, because its vote is so thinly spread. So almost every vote for Nigel Farage's party, coming as it will from Tory ranks, will increase Sir Keir's chances of arriving in Downing Street.

Rishi Sunak (right) has bested Sir Keir Starmer (left) in debate and continuing to do battle while surrounded by defeatist talk

Almost every vote for Reform - whose leader is Nigel Farage (left) - will increase Sir Keir's (right) chances of arriving in Downing Street

Do those who wish to give the Tory Party a punitive shock really think that a long, cold Labour government is a worthwhile price for this momentary pleasure?

And what sort of government will that be? Sir Keir has tried very hard not to tell us, because he knows we will not like what he plans.

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There is a precedent for this. Sir Tony Blair, in 1997, trilled all kinds of slogans about how much he cared about education and crime.

But his biggest actions – a savage raid on private pensions, and abandoning government control of the Bank of England – were concealed from voters and indeed from most of his own shadow cabinet.

And when his second term came, all pretences of responsible spending limitations were abandoned in a vast egalitarian splurge. Actually, Sir Keir has offered us many hints without meaning to.

He has blurted out that he views anyone with savings as a target for new taxation – watch out for the likely weaponisation of council tax. He has exposed himself as a purveyor of petty class-war spite by his plans to impose VAT on independent schools, so closing them to all but the super-rich.

He has constitutional plans which would make the Left-wing transformation of this country – begun under Sir Tony – impossible to reverse. And he does not intend to leave No 10 once he arrives, or not for many years.

Sir Tony Blair speaks during the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's Future of Britain Conference in central London

His cynical scheme to give votes to schoolchildren at 16 reveals a ruthless and shameless hunger for power.

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Modern governments – including Labour ones – have repeatedly taken away freedoms (buying cigarettes, going into combat, getting married) from 16-year-olds.

The move is a naked ploy to give the ballot to young voters who are statistically far more likely to vote Left than Right.

If he can do this, how can we be sure he will not revive another policy he recently supported, the granting of votes to EU citizens?

Sometimes in recent years, it may have seemed as if there was not much left to fight for or to fight against.

A dreary sameness descended over our politics, and many turned away from it.

But there are real issues to be decided on Thursday, issues which the supposedly 'changed' Labour Party and its mysterious, mirthless leader have striven with all their might to keep us from noticing. That is why this is no time for gestures or protest votes.

Angela Rayner (left) poses Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and party supporters in front of the battle bus in Hamilton, Scotland

For all their faults, the Tories are what stand between us and Sir Keir's leaden wokery, his green zealotry, his instinctive desire to tax savers, his feeble opaqueness on mass immigration, his embedded sympathy for the Remainer cause, and his party which, for all its makeovers and tweakments, remains what it has always been, a machine for spending other people's money until it runs out.

It is not all over yet. Vote Conservative on Thursday and we may yet escape a long and punishing season of hard Labour.