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. In fact, YouGov this week projected a 22-point Khan win in its capital city mayoralty poll. The reality is that the Hall campaign significantly outperformed the polls, while Khan severely under-achieved. But that will be scant consolation.
The apparent calling-off on Friday of the plot to bring down Rishi Sunak will surely strike some Tory MPs as somewhat premature given these second day results. Hall and Street’s losses have given lie to the idea that green shoots of political recovery were detectable.
Given the disastrous Tory showing in the Blackpool South by-election and local council contests, the defeat of Street means the only thing Sunak has to hang his hat on is Ben Houchen’s relatively comfortable victory in the Tees Valley mayoral race. But everyone knows that was largely down to Houchen’s huge personal vote and that he barely mentioned the Conservative party in his campaign.
There really are no reasons to be cheerful for Conservative MPs and neither is there a serviceable plot to change the leader or an obvious alternative guaranteed to do better.
This apparent locking-in of Sunak as prime minister until the election will please Nigel Farage, who regards him as a limited, predictable and underwhelming opponent who is ill-equipped to pull back voters from the Reform party or stop more defecting to it. A Farage return to the political fray in time for the general election is now that much more likely. That will pile more pressure onto a crumbling Tory edifice.
Tory MPs desperately looking round for an escape route would be wise now to direct their attentions to one thing: the low turnouts.
A path to salvation will not be found among those who were sufficiently motivated to turn out and reject the Tories in these contests. But among the millions more who sat on their hands there might just still be an audience waiting to be persuaded. Can Sunak’s party find them? Can it connect with them? That looks long odds against. But it is the only thing left to be done.
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