What will post-pandemic politics look like?

A few days ago, I came across a group of Tory MPs in a House of Commons corridor looking rather perplexed. It soon became apparent why. They had been discussing the government’s myriad problems and expressing their concerns about how things were being handled by Downing Street. Then their phones had pinged with news of a poll that showed the Tories moving into a six-point lead.

To be sure, not all the polls are this favourable to the Conservative party: one at the weekend had Labour two points ahead. There is also an argument that it’s not useful to look at voting intentions so far away from the next general election, and that a much more valuable question to indicate where public political mood is going is: ‘Which of the leaders do you think would make the best prime minister?’

But there is no getting away from the fact that, on average, the Tories are maintaining a narrow lead in the polls despite a series of ‘worst weeks’ for the government that have left even cabinet ministers puzzled at Downing Street’s political judgments. One Secretary of State describes the row over free school meals as ‘blindingly obvious’ and fumes that the government has to sort out the situation before the end of term, if it is to avoid being portrayed as Scrooge letting Tiny Tim go hungry over Christmas.

One long-serving figure in government thinks that the situation in the polls reflects the fact that ‘“Brenda from Bristol” has gone from being a reaction to elections, to a general reaction to politics’. Brenda from Bristol was, of course, the member of the public who responded to a journalist’s question about Theresa May’s announcement of the 2017 snap election by saying: ‘Not another one… there’s too much politics going on at the moment.’