Don’t let defeat turn into a hard-Left rout

ONE of the qualities that has made Boris Johnson such a successful and magnetic politician is his almost boundless optimism.

Where many in Westminster seem daunted by difficulties, he believes they can be overcome through can-do spirit. His glass is less half full than positively overflowing.

But it would be a grave mistake for the Prime Minister to sugar-coat yesterday’s humiliating by-election defeats.

If the walloping in Wakefield, where Labour regained a brick in the Red Wall that it had lost in 2019, was bad, then the trouncing in Tiverton and Honiton was catastrophic. It had been Tory since 1835. Yet in a colossal convulsion, the Lib Dems blew away its seemingly unconquerable 24,000 majority – the biggest turn of fortune in British political history.

The Conservatives mustn’t foolishly shrug off these losses as mere mid-term blues.

Nor should they dismiss them as the consequence of local troubles (one MP quit after being convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy, the other for watching pornography in the Commons).

No, this was a mini-referendum on Mr Johnson and his premiership. The dire results speak for themselves. Voters are understandably livid at illicit lockdown parties and other scandals in No10.

And they are anxious about the cost of living crunch, with food, petrol and energy prices going through the roof.

Of course, the Treasury is helping struggling households by giving them up to £1,100 each. Yet Labour, aided by an almost universally hostile broadcast media, are successfully propagating the lie that nothing is being done.

Spooked by the by- election defeats, Conservative MPs are looking nervously at their own majorities. The PM’s would-be assassins are sharpening their blades. But the Mail urges them to stay their hands.