Theresa may

Today’s polls suggest that Theresa May could be on track to secure a Commons majority of 150, reversing – in just 20 years – the landslide that was inflicted on the Tories in 1997. These figures, from the Daily Telegraph, reveal no fresh agony for Labour: already the worst case scenario being floated in Labour circles would involve a catastrophic loss of about 100 MPs. This is an apocalyptic vision, mainly propagated by centre-leaning folk who have seen their influence wane over the past two years, and is something of a long-shot (the bookies currently favour a Labour seat band of 150-199, but only price 100-149 at 5/2). But let’s say

Exaggeration is the political pundits’ stock in trade: nobody built a loyal readership on equivocation. But Matthew Parris’ recent commentary about the Conservative Party’s direction under Theresa May borders on the hysterical. A few weeks ago he used his Times column to hyperventilate about a Conservative Party ‘paralysed in the headlights of a dangerous surge of reckless populism and in thrall to its own right wing’. Last Saturday, he returned to the theme and wrote of a ‘deep, deep shift under way in our party…leaving anyone once attracted to the strong strand of tolerance and moderation we found powerful in the Conservative tradition feeling cowed, discouraged’. You would have thought

Everything you need to know about the current state of the polls is summed up by the fact that one which puts the Tories at 40 per cent, a level that they haven’t hit in a general election for a quarter of a century, and 11 points clear is presented as a blow to them. Now, the reason that the Mail on Sunday has done this is because other polls have the Tories so far ahead that a mere 11 point lead looks rather anaemic. ComRes has the Tories at a jaw-dropping 50 per cent, with Labour on 25 per cent. YouGov puts the Tories on 48 per cent, and

We are coming to the end of the first week of an election campaign that few were expecting when this week began. The parties are drawing their battle lines: the Tories are warning of a happy Vladimir Putin and a ‘coalition of chaos’ involving the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems, while Labour is making this an anti-establishment election (though what precisely the Establishment is up to and which naughty coffee chains it involves remains vague, even for the party’s MPs promoting that message on the airwaves). The Lib Dems, meanwhile, had long worked out their pitch as the anti-Brexit party. Of course, not all Labour MPs are talking about

We are all drama queens, really, we political hacks; and so we were all thoroughly delighted by Theresa May’s Tuesday coup. I have long been arguing that we would have an election this year, and I had been beginning to feel lonely. But one big thing I got wrong: it had seemed to me in January that a Brexit election would shatter much party discipline, since the voters would be principally interested in where candidates stood on the Great Issue and both Tories and Labour were deeply divided about it. However, by framing the current contest in the way she has, May has deftly but brutally carved away the long