Who can blame Boris Johnson for feeling smug?

The real victor of these local elections? Boris Johnson. According to Oscar Wilde, the only thing in life worse than being talked about, is not being talked about. It’s a sign of Boris Johnson’s skill in attracting headlines that even as the Conservatives suffer a shellacking at the local elections, his being turned away from a polling station for failing to bring ID – a new requirement under a law he introduced – is still a leading news story.

In a career pockmarked by marital imbroglios, cake ambushes, and faulty zipwires, this doesn’t reach the top 20 of the ex-prime minister’s most notable embarrassment. While LBC’s James O’Brien puts on his tinfoil hat to speculate about a pre-planned, limelight-hunting brain fade, Johnson’s mistakes strike me as more cock-up than conspiracy. Either way, he has a much better reason to be smug today.

Many of the positions up for grabs this week were last elected in 2021. Johnson, ensconced in Number 10, was enjoying the heights of his vaccine rollout bounce. The Tories picked up 13 councils, triumphed in the Hartlepool by-election, and gave Labour a bloody enough nose to put Keir Starmer’s leadership on the line. Backed by his inflatable doppelgänger, Johnson looked set to govern for a decade.

Within a year, the nation had become much more familiar with the name Sue Gray. Johnson’s premiership only had a few more months to stagger on. Fast forward three years, and his successor-but-one is presiding over the worst set of Tory local election results in forty years, according to John Curtice. Rather than govern for a decade, the Conservatives might struggle to last the summer.

Even as a succession of pale-looking cabinet ministers mumble their Comical Ali routine about clinging on in Harlow, the collective picture is bleak. Labour out-performed expectations in Blackpool South, where the Tories narrowly avoided coming third, and have taken councils in Thurrock, Rushmoor, and Redditch. Hartlepool – site of that great by-election triumph – has been stormed by the Starmtroopers.

At the time of writing, I don’t know if Andy Street will have sufficiently distanced himself from Rishi Sunak to join Ben Houchen in clinging on to his regionals fiefdoms, if Susan Hall will prove to be Harrow’s answer to Harry Truman, or if the council blood-letting will be stemmed. But the overall outcome is clear: angry Tories are staying at home – and swing voters are devoting in droves.

Our local elections must look bizarre to any foreign observer bothered enough to look: an annual, state-run opinion poll, where the parties performing best in a particular area get the unusual prize of managing bin collections for four years. But for those Conservative MPs still wallowing in comforting denialism, they mean reality can no longer be fooled. The Tories are heading for a landslide defeat.

Hence why Johnson might be feeling a little smug. Of course, I doubt Henley’s favourite son will be happy to see the party to which he has devoted his adult life to in such dire straits. But he will feel some vindication to his claim, made as he resigned outside of Downing Street, that removing him when the Tories were only a few points behind in the polls was an act of mid-term madness.

That Johnson’s downfall was self-authored is something his out-riders are usually keen to skate over. Nonetheless, they are already out in force, tying the results to his absence. Nadine Dorries has been tweeting pictures of suspicious-looking graffiti, whilst Andrea Jenkyns has called for a ‘radical’ right-wing platform, with an emergency cabinet reshuffle bringing Cincinnatus back as party chairman.

Sunak is unlikely to take much heed of strategic advice from a pair who have written a book denouncing him and called for his resignation. But he cannot ignore that their anger stems from a position shared by many Conservatives across the country. An 80-seat majority has been wasted on five years of self-indulgent infighting, while taxes have risen, immigration has soared, and voters have deserted.

Tory MPs for marginal seats who haven’t yet been wise enough to line up a decent lobbying gig for their approaching unemployment may be tempted to break the glass marked ‘Leadership Challenge’. But our ConservativeHome survey suggests doing so would only further upset Tory members: 63 per cent think Sunak should not resign, and a similar figure feel it would only worsen party prospects.

That’s hardly surprising. They have lived through recent history. We can point out the endless caveats: Covid, a war in Ukraine, that members elected the worst prime minister in history as Tory leader. But the underlying truth remains the same: that those voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019 hoping for a new kind of Tory party have discovered we are just as myopic and incompetent as they feared.

For all his faults, Johnson embodied that realignment. For all his virtues, Sunak has proven unmatched to take of keeping it together. But there is hope. Houchen and Street prove that strong Conservative leaders, zealously focused on delivering for their constituents, can win even in Labour areas. If Hall beats Khan, it will show what easy targets tax-raising and virtue-signalling Labour politicians are.

These are a few glimmers of hope amidst the gloom. If Sunak waits until the autumn for an election, it only provides a few more months for Tory support to dwindle, for Labour to get their act together, and for Nigel Farage to return to politics to finish his former party off. Looking back at 2021 from today, a simple lesson becomes obvious: things can always get worse. Johnson has been an unlikely prophet.

In just three years, the Conservatives have gone from all-conquering to losing the home of the British Army. That should be much more embarrassing than any forgotten ID.