Why Tories are talking up Labour

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them.

This is not as odd as it first sounds. The Tories are worried about complacency, about their vote not turning out. If voters cannot envisage Jeremy Corbyn in No 10, and don’t take the election seriously, why should they make their way to the polling station and play their part in a Theresa May coronation? As one minister close to the campaign puts it: ‘The risk is exhaustion with politics. That the only people turning up to vote will be hardcore Brexiteers and hardcore Corbynites.’

James Forsyth and Paul Goodman consider May’s new Conservative party:

Their other great worry is that the near-certainty of a Tory victory blunts their attack lines. If Corbyn has no chance of becoming PM, then there’s no risk in voting for your local Labour candidate, or backing the Liberal Democrats. If Corbyn’s finger isn’t going to be on the button, it doesn’t matter that he wouldn’t use the nuclear deterrent in any circumstances. If Labour aren’t going to be in government, it is academic who they would tax more.

So, the Tories need voters to think that Corbyn could, somehow, become Prime Minister.