I fear the Conservatives might just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

It’s possible that Labour’s rise continues, driven by forces that the Tories can’t understand or combat

In the downstairs loo at The Spectator hang magazine covers that were never published because the events they depict never happened. Hillary Clinton as president in the Oval Office, Jeremy Hunt stepping into in 10 Downing Street – in an era of historical surprises and tight deadlines, we have to be prepared.

Our Christmas issue goes to press the morning after the general election so artwork options are needed now. The ‘Labour wins’ cover shows a crib with a baby Corbyn instead of a saviour, with three wise men looking on in horror. It’s quite funny. Or it would be, if its implications were not so serious.

You might think all this a waste of an artist’s time. Most polls suggest that the only question is whether Boris Johnson wins by a modest margin or by a landslide. Yougov have a sophisticated new polling model, tested in the last US Congress elections, which points to a 68-seat Tory majority. Sir John Curtice, the doyen of opinion pollsters, says the chances of a Corbyn majority now are “as close to zero as one can safely say.” Once, I’d have agreed. But I’m afraid I think the Tories are still capable of blowing this, for quite a few reasons.

It’s quite true that Jeremy Corbyn is having a tough campaign, having been eviscerated in television interviews with the Chief Rabbi now lined up against him. But we have to ask: how damaging is this, really? Support for Labour has been growing steadily since the election was called, just as it did in 2017. Anti-semitism accusations were quite audible last time around and didn’t stop Labour picking up enough support to deny the Tories a majority. The worse the headlines are for Corbyn, the higher his support seems to climb.

Let’s not pretend that the Corbyn agenda is dismissed nationwide as a socialist calamity-in-waiting. His plans to nationalise water, railways, electricity and gas are supported by about half of all voters; his idea for a British Broadband Corporation is backed by a margin of three to one.

So if you think Corbynomics is too radical, too off-the-wall to ever win an election, think again. Voters certainly regard it as impractical but there is a lot more public sympathy with his overall aims (and worldview) than the likes of like me normally admit.

The headlines are bad, but less harmful in an age when more people get their news from social media than from any newspaper. There’s no shortage of anti-tory material in cyberspace: you can read that a Tory victory will mean selling the NHS to Americans, women paying to give birth, and worse. The wilder the conspiracy theory the more likely it is to be shared online. Almost a third of the electorate now regard the Prime Minister as racist, probably even more believe another internet trope that Tory austerity killed thousands. There is no ‘gatekeeper’ in social media, no one to be held to account if false information is spread. It’s a new game that the Tories are not very good at playing.

Meanwhile, there’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did. Timidity doesn’t suit him. To have him tiptoeing around the campaign like a pull-string doll saying “Get Brexit Done” every time it is prodded is a waste of his wit and energy. Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes. Which is odd because he is, by instinct, a whodares-wins kind of leader. We could see a bit more of his daring.

Expectations of a big Tory victory, of course, make such a victory far less likely – especially if the Tory Remainers calculate that they can risk staying at home or even vote Libdem to punish the party for its Brexiteering. Almost four million have registered to vote since the election was called, a million more than at the same stage last time. They’re overwhelmingly younger voters, ergo far less likely to vote Tory. What effect will this have?

We have no idea, which complicates things further. One of the main reasons pollsters keep getting elections so wrong is that they can never be sure who will turn out to vote.

Pollsters also struggle in guessing which way the don’t-knows will jump. Even now, after all we know about Jeremy Corbyn and all that’s been said about Brexit, one in six voters follow Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion remain undecided. It could be that that the Tories have already squeezed as much as they can from the Brexit vote and most don’t-knows will break for Labour. Over the seven days that Yougov took to complete its complicated new poll, its forecast for a Tory majority fell by 16 seats. If this trend continues – and why shouldn’t it? – there might not be any majority left at all.

Into this delicate moment leaps Donald Trump, the star guest at next week’s Nato summit in London. He’s keen to help the Tories, which is what is so dangerous. On his last visit, he thought it helpful to say that the NHS would be “on the table” in any US-UK trade talks. This yielded a video clip that anti-tory campaigners now project on the side of hospitals, seen as proof that the NHS will be sacrificed on the capitalist altar. On his last visit, Trump kept British officials waiting for ages on Heathrow tarmac while he composed a tweet denouncing Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. The Corbynites will be praying for another denunciation this time around.

The last election was summed up best, as so often, by a Matt cartoon in this newspaper. It showed two children catching butterflies with one saying to the other: “My dad’s an opinion pollster. I hope he never loses that sense of wonder and surprise at election results.”

It’s quite possible that the pollsters’ curse is broken this time; that they learn from their (years of) mistakes. But it’s also possible that Labour’s rise continues, driven by forces the Tories can’t understand or combat, leading to yet another hung parliament. Or worse. Unlikely? Perhaps. But impossible? Absolutely not.