Tory supporters went to bed on Friday night believing that their man Andy Street would hold on handily in the West Midlands Metro Mayor contest, while also daring to dream that Susan Hall might just pull off a sensational win over Sadiq Khan in London.
It has not played out like that. Not only did Labour handsomely win this year’s round of May elections, but it also won the expectations management battle.
There really are no reasons to be cheerful for Conservative MPs
In the West Midlands contest, a wafer-thin triumph for Labour’s Richard Parker over Street probably doesn’t tell us much about the general election results to come later in the year in that battleground region. But it still lands as a body-blow for Tory morale and a cause for unbridled jubilation among Labourites who thought they would lose.
A win by around 11 percentage points by Khan over Hall is today generally being seen as a disaster for the Conservatives.
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