With the polls regularly showing double-digit Tory leads and the Covid restrictions on course to go on the 19 July, you might expect Tory MPs to be in a fairly relaxed mood. But, as I say in the new edition of the magazine, last week’s by-election, which saw the Liberal Democrats replace a 16,000 Conservative majority with an 8,000 majority of their own, has sparked a panic among Tories sitting for similar seats.
‘You can’t overstate the rage of southern MPs at the moment,’ says one ‘blue wall’ Tory. ‘Whatever their gripe is, it is why we lost Chesham and Amersham.’ There is a view among southern Conservatives that northern seats have been getting No. 10’s attention because their MPs shout louder. One speculates that they need ‘a southern version of Jake Berry’, the pugnacious leader of the Northern Research Group.
In Chesham and Amersham, the Lib Dems campaigned heavily on their opposition to the government’s planning reforms, so their victory has intensified concerns about the proposals on the Tory benches.
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