Nigel Farage has predicted the Tories will soon descend into “warfare” as a former Conservative minister warned voters about a “Labour elective dictatorship” if they voted for Reform.

The Reform UK leader told The Sunday Telegraph that divisions in the party were only going to “get worse” in the run-up to polling day on 4 July.

Mr Farage was speaking as three polls this week painted a bleak picture for Mr Sunak – and a sunny one for his party.

A poll by Savanta for The Sunday Telegraph showed the Tories down four points to just 21% of the vote – the lowest by that pollster since the dying days of Theresa May’s premiership in early 2019.

In a boost for Mr Farage, the poll showed Reform UK up three points with 13% of the vote.

Election latest: Tories ‘facing electoral extinction’, says pollster

A separate Survation poll for Best for Britain, published by The Sunday Times, predicted the Tories would win just 72 seats in the next parliament, compared with 456 for Labour.

The result would give Labour a majority of 262 seats – far surpassing the landslide Labour achieved by Tony Blair in 1997 – while the Liberal Democrats would pick up 56 seats, Reform seven and the Greens one seat.

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Earlier in the week, a YouGov poll put Reform ahead of the Tories for the first time – on 19% of the vote, compared with 18% for the Conservatives.

Mr Farage, who is set to launch Reform’s manifesto on Monday, told the Sunday Telegraph that “within a week, you watch… there’ll be warfare within the Conservative Party as there was in the run-up to ’97,” referring to the election when Labour last won a landslide under Mr Blair.

He likened the current divisions in the Conservative Party – chiefly over migration – to splits under former Tory prime minister John Major over joining the Euro.

“In the run-up to ’97, John Major said that he was agnostic about joining the Euro,” he told the newspaper.

“Those who wanted to join the Euro did their own manifesto and raised their own money. It was an absolutely split, divided joke and the same will happen in this election. You watch, it’s coming.

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“You will start to see those MPs, who I agree with on most things, start becoming much more vociferous about their stance as opposed to that of the party. The splits are going to get worse. And to them, I will say: ‘Sorry guys, you are just in the wrong party’.”

It comes as former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who is touted as a future Tory leader, gave an interview with the same newspaper saying he “shares the frustrations” of traditional Tory voters who are tempted to defect to Reform – but that they should stick with Mr Sunak’s party to avoiding handing Labour a landslide.

“I have immense sympathy for those natural Conservatives who feel let down and drawn to Reform,” he said.

“Not only do I understand their frustrations, I share many of them.

“The tax burden is too high, the criminal justice system too soft and public services too inefficient. My disagreements with the government on immigration policy meant I resigned from cabinet.”

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He added: “But, ultimately, a vote for Reform will only give Labour a blank cheque to take our country back to the 1970s.

“Voting Reform cannot be the answer. It can only bring about a government that increases taxes and immigration. Their success can only weaken the conservative movement. The right cannot unify after the election if there is no meaningful force in parliament to coalesce around.

“Our task is to make conservatives across Britain aware of this peril. If we can do that, and make the case that only a vote for the Conservative Party can prevent a calamitous one-party state come 5 July, then we can avert disaster.”

Elon Musk is again claiming that Tesla’s always “coming next year” Roadster will be able to fly.

The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was first unveiled in 2017, and it was supposed to come into production in 2020, but it has been delayed every year since then.

It has become a sort of running joke, and there are doubts that it will ever come to market despite Tesla’s promise of dozens of free new Roadsters to Tesla owners who participated in its referral program years ago.

But earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk made some rare new comments about the next-gen Tesla Roadster, reviving hope that the vehicle will finally happen.

Musk said that Tesla will unveil a much-needed updated version of the next-gen Roadster since the design of the yet-to-be-revealed vehicle is already 7 years old, and he said that vehicle would come to market in 2025.

We haven’t heard anything bout the vehicle since and it wasn’t in Tesla’s shareholders meeting presentation.

Now, Musk has again made a rare new comment about the new Tesla Roadster – saying that it “can fly”:

The CEO had previously talked about an updated version of the new Tesla Roadster with something called ‘SpaceX package’, which would include cold air thrusters that could theoretically make the vehicle “fly”, or rather jump and possibly hover, for short distances.

Electrek’s Take

It’s pretty funny that Elon is responding to a guy using the classic technology complaint that “we were promised flying cars, but they are never coming” with a vehicle that Tesla has been promising every year for the past 4 years.

At this point, the Roadster, like FSD, is something that entered the “put up, or shut up” phase.

Bring it or stop talking about it, especially the flying part. The Roadster was supposed to be the “halo effect” for electric cars. I’m not sure how the cold air trusters play into this.