If you’ll forgive the cliché, it’s cold, gray and raining in Downing Street this morning and that feels about right given the mood in the Conservative Party.
Conservative MPs were braced for bad local election results. Those we’ve had so far are at the lowest end of possible expectations. Mix in the enormous swing to Labor in the Blackpool South by-election and you get a really bitter cocktail for the Conservatives.
Sure, things don’t seem to be much bleacher than they were at last year’s local elections. But this was meant to be the year that the polls narrowed from that low ebb. Conservative MPs thought an improving economy would chip away at Labour’s lead.
That simply has not happened.
What about Rishi Sunak’s leadership? The prevailing mood among Conservative MPs has been that, however bad their electoral predicament, changing leader again would only make that worse.
It’s too early to say whether many, if any, have changed their minds following these results.
Some I’ve spoken to this morning are still waiting to see what happens in the mayoral contests in the Tees Valley (result due this afternoon) and the West Midlands (result due tomorrow) before forming a view.
Speak to elections experts and they find this amusing. These are contests with two incumbent Conservatives with strong personal brands who won at a canter last time round and have been busily distancing themselves from Sunak in recent months. The Conservatives could hold both while still suffering ominously large swings.
Yet Conservative MPs are in the market for psychological boost — something to hold on to. And they’re looking to the mayoral elections to find it.
The stakes for those mayoral contests, which were already high. They are now even higher.
Tags: Local election results live #Starmer #tells Sunak #Labor wins #Blackpool South
