Social distancing

Conservative candidates across the UK appear to be keen to distance themselves from the PM ahead of local elections. Some candidates insisted they were ‘local Conservatives’; others disguised their leaflets in green. But Hartlepool’s James Brewer went a step further, asking voters in his campaign literature, “please don’t punish local Conservatives for the mistakes made in Westminster”. Whollyrude would have thought, given the proclivities of one now-former Tory MP caught googling ‘Dominator’, some of them quite like to be punished.