Just 48 hours out from polling day and in Tory circles the expectations are that the local election results will be OK in some places and disastrous in others; there are predictions of ‘carnage in Surrey and Oxfordshire’. ‘Things are particularly bad in Scotland, bad in London, not great in the South West, but in the Red Wall marginals the mood is not that bad’ is how one Johnson ministerial loyalist sums up the mood.
One cabinet minister predicts headlines about a ‘Blue Wall meltdown’, saying that the ‘the Libs are now detoxified post coalition’ and have, once again, become seen as a safe repository for a protest vote.
If the results do turn out like this, then it will reinforce current divisions in the Tory parliamentary party – with MPs in Lib Dem facing marginals particularly anxious about the prospect of Johnson continuing as leader. One of Johnson’s closest supporters says that after the locals that ‘the MPs we thought we had a problem with, we’ll have more of a problem with’.
But at the moment, it seems like the locals won’t be a trigger for a no-confidence vote in Johnson. One well-connected minister predicts that the Tories are ‘entering a phase of it’s not great but let’s see where things are in six months.’ Interestingly, one Johnson confidant is far more worried about the privileges committee investigation, not expected to be done until the autumn, into whether Johnson misled parliament than the Gray report.
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