Theresa May has not had a good week. She has lost her Home Secretary and had the Brexit inner Cabinet knock back her customs partnership. But the overnight results in the local elections won’t increase the pressure on her. For the Tories have quite comfortably beaten expectations, which were—as Katy says —pretty low.
Back in January, those Tory MPs who want May out thought that the local elections results would provide an opportunity for a renewed push against her. This is now clearly not the case. No one will be sending their letters in because of these results and no Tory MP will be more worried about losing their seat at the next election than they were this time yesterday.
The results will also add to the sense that Labour picked all the low hanging fruit at the last election, and that it will be much more difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to make any further progress.
This doesn’t mean that Theresa May is in clover. As I say in the magazine this week, it is very hard to see where she can safely go on Brexit. But these local election results won’t increase the pressure on her.
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