What the commentators said

Don’t be so sure that the Tories will achieve their landslide, said George Eaton in the New Statesman. True, Corbyn ranks as the least popular opposition leader in polling history: true, also, that Brexit has robbed UKIP of its key selling point. But plenty of Remainers may switch to the Lib Dems. The Tories’ own private polling suggests they stand to lose most of the 27 seats they won from the Lib Dems in 2015. Indeed, MPS from the West Country “pleaded with May not to go to the country”. London, where many voters “are more stridently anti-brexit than they are pro-conservative”, also look likes fertile territory for the anti-tory vote, said Rod Liddle in The Spectator. Brexit aside, Corbyn could still pose a risk to May, said Andrew Marr in The Sunday Times. Anger is still “seething” among those hurt by the 2008 financial crash. Might Labour not profit from the widespread “plague-on-all-their-houses mood”?

Dream on, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. You only have to contemplate “the pale faces” of Labour MPS at Westminster to see the reality. They look like “patients who have just had the bad news from the oncologist: it’s terminal”. And no wonder: they’re widely seen as “the party of posh metropolitans who defend only immigrants and people on benefits”. They’re mistrusted by the very people who form their core support. By contrast, May’s big draw is that she doesn’t patronise the voters, said Juliet Samuel in The Daily Telegraph. Unlike her counterparts in the EU, she doesn’t dismiss what they call the “populist backlash” as a historical “aberration” to be kept tightly controlled: she sees it as evidence something has gone wrong with our politics, something the Government must tackle. That’s why she now leads one of the few mainstream parties in Europe that could see its support increase. Nor should the Left console itself by noting polls have got it spectacularly wrong in recent elections, said James Moore in The Independent. “The biggest flaw in UK polling has been the consistent underestimation of Tory support.”