London shows what happens to the Tories when homeowners become a minority

Next Saturday had long been circled in Tory plotters’ diaries as the date on which the next effort to remove Theresa May would begin. But as I say in The Sun this morning, even May’s most ardent Tory critics now accept that next week’s local elections aren’t going to lead to her downfall.

Why, because expectations are so low for the Tories that they are almost bound to surpass them. (May’s own position is also stronger than it was in January thanks to her handling of the Salisbury attack.) Tory insiders now believe that they are likely to hold one of their London flagship councils, Westminster and Wandsworth. This combined with some gains in the West Midlands, which they are hopeful of, will enable them to claim that these are reasonable results for a governing party in mid-term.